The author | Lemon Editor | Moonmi
In half an hour, the US group fell by 15%.
On February 18, the National Development and Reform Commission and 14 other departments issued a notice on several policies on promoting the recovery and development of difficult industries in the service industry, which clearly stated that Internet platform enterprises such as takeaway should be guided to further reduce the service fee standards for merchants in the catering industry and reduce the operating costs of relevant catering enterprises. Guide Internet platform enterprises to give preferential service fees to catering enterprises in county-level administrative regions where high-risk areas are located during the epidemic.
As soon as the news came out, the stock price of the US group fell in response to the sound, the straight line flashed, the cliff-like decline was shocking, and the market value directly evaporated by 200 billion Hong Kong dollars. This is a big gift from the capital market to Wang Xing's 43rd birthday. / This is Wang Xing's 43rd birthday, but the sensitive capital market does not pick the day.
In the third quarter of 2021, it can be seen that the profit margin of Meituan's takeaway business has dropped from 3.7% to 3.3%. With the further standardization of the takeaway industry and the gradual improvement of relevant laws and regulations, Meituan's takeaway business is no longer the star business of Meituan.
Less than a week before that, Meituan had just applied for the trademark of "Meituan E-commerce", and earlier, on February 8, 2022, according to Lu Jiu Finance, Meituan officially pushed the "treasure box" at the entrance of the grass planting community to the front of the stage, following the trend and embedding a small red book. All kinds of actions are revealing Meituan's ambitions for e-commerce business.
The profit margin of the takeaway business has been further reduced, and the scale of the low-frequency in-store wine and tourism business has slowly advanced, and now the best choice for Meituan is probably to continue to deepen its cultivation in the e-commerce retail business. However, in the face of the three-legged pattern of the domestic e-commerce track, can the MEITUAN e-commerce support it?
Conquer the third mountain
26.4 billion, which is the revenue of Meituan's catering takeaway business in the third quarter of 2021, accounting for more than 50% of the overall revenue in the quarter. In the meituan financial report in the past two years, the revenue of the takeaway business has been rising steadily, but the profit has been sluggish, and the increase in revenue is not an embarrassing problem for the Meituan, from 2018 to 2021, the scale of the takeaway market has expanded by more than 50%, and the share of the Meituan takeaway market has gradually increased, and by the third quarter of 2021, the Meituan trading users exceeded 667 million, occupying nearly 70% of the takeaway market, which is a well-deserved industry hegemon.
Under the general trend of anti-monopoly, Meituan, as an industry leader, faces no small risks.
This is not the first time that the US group has "jumped off a cliff", coincidentally, the last problem was also in the takeaway business. In July 2021, the Guiding Opinions on Implementing the Responsibilities of Online Catering Platforms and Effectively Safeguarding the Rights and Interests of Takeaway Delivery Workers caused Meituan's stock price to fall by 15%, and its stock price fell by 30% within two days. In October 2021, Meituan received an administrative penalty from the State Administration for Market Regulation in accordance with the law, fully refunding the exclusive cooperation deposit of 1.289 billion yuan and imposing a fine of 3% of its sales of 114.748 billion yuan in China in 2020, totaling 3.442 billion yuan.
Anti-monopoly, rider treatment, and promotion of the recovery of the service industry, one sledgehammer after another, and now the best choice for Meituan is probably to continue to inject e-commerce retail business.
Meituan's style has always been "to lay the next mountain, immediately aim at the next mountain", if takeaway is the second mountain after the hotel hotel business, then the third mountain of the Meituan is e-commerce.
From the first quarter of 2020 to the third quarter of 2021, relying on the retail business and sharing bicycles, the revenue growth rate of this business segment exceeded 220%, and the loss expanded from 2 billion yuan in the same period last year to 10.9 billion yuan, an increase of more than 400% year-on-year, which Meituan explained in particular, "Due to our increase in investment in this segment, especially in the retail business." In addition, Meituan also spent a full page to explain the analysis and expectations of the retail business, and it is not difficult to see the confidence in this business between the words.
More importantly, the core value of Meituan's takeaway business is not profit, but drainage. Meituan's wine and tourism business also relies on the traffic of the takeaway business to drive it, which is the high-frequency driving low-frequency play method adopted by Meituan after forming a platform effect.
As early as 2012, when preparing the C round of financing for Meituan, Wang Xing repeatedly stressed that meituan's target was Amazon, and Amazon's flywheel effect was also the concept that Wang Xing had mentioned many times, that is, the various business modules of a company would organically promote each other, just like the gears of the bite. However, this gear set takes a lot of effort to rotate from stationary to rotating, but the effort of each lap will not be in vain. Once a gear is turned, the entire gear set will rotate rapidly.
Find the rotating gear to achieve the flywheel effect, and before that, you must first build a gear set.
Wang Puzhong, senior vice president of Meituan and president of the Home Business Group, said in a group interview in 2017 that Tencent will never establish a second sales team, and it is willing to give up opportunities in order to pursue the rationality of the organization and the efficiency of management; even if meituan makes the organization chaotic and redundant in the short term, it will never give up the opportunity. This may also be reflected in the expansion process of the US group, and the advance layout of e-commerce retail may not be derived from the "redundant" thinking of the past.
The end of the internet is e-commerce?
Wang Xing once wrote for the book "Finite and Infinite Game": "Finite games are played within boundaries, but infinite games are playing with boundaries, that is, playing with 'rules', exploring and changing the boundaries themselves." There is actually only one infinite game, and that is your life, and death is an insurmountable boundary. In contrast, other boundaries are not so important. ”
Wang Xing's infinite game is the borderless development of the Meituan, if the Meituan is compared to a big tree, then the tree must be a multitude of branches.
In an interview with Caijing, Wang Xing once said, "In fact, everything has no simple boundaries, so I don't think we should set limits for ourselves." As long as the core is clear – who do we really serve? What services are provided to them? We will continue to try all kinds of businesses. ”
From the group purchase website in 2010, the development of meituan has stumbled all the way, group buying, public reviews, wine travel ticketing, takeaway, many projects forever stay in history, such as squirrel convenience stores, shared charging treasures, beauty, etc., there are also the wrong times, after the time is ripe to re-launch the taxi business.
More and more business means more and more opponents, but Meituan does not mind. Wang Xing has publicly stated on social platforms that his worldview is influenced by a game called "Civilization", which is a turn-based strategy game of self-made countries, for players, the larger the land area, the better, and believe that war and plunder are kings.
But Wang Xing's infinite game is not blindly expanding, and once it does not meet expectations, it will be decisively abandoned. Guo Qing, vice president of Meituan, also confirmed this line of thinking in an interview, if Meituan finds that the return on investment is too low after a small-scale test, it will abandon projects that do not meet commercial rules. This means that if the return on investment is in line with expectations, then the US group will unswervingly continue to raise. As Wang Xing once said in an interview with China Entrepreneur, "Insist on doing the right thing." ”
In 2020, Meituan officially entered the community group buying business and established the "Preferred Business Department", and Meituan Flash Purchase, Meituan Preferred, and Meituan Grocery Shopping became the troika of Meituan's retail business.
In 2021, Wang Xing changed Meituan's strategy from "food + platform" to "technology + retail", and regarded community e-commerce as an "opportunity to build e-commerce infrastructure", which means that e-commerce business will be meituan's "third mountain".
In February 2022, Meituan officially pushed the "treasure box" of the entrance of the grass planting community to the front of the stage, and its e-commerce business learned Taobao, followed the trend and embedded a small red book, and at the same time added a scoring system in addition to the grass planting notes, which is slightly similar to the public reviews. Subsequently, according to Tianyan, Meituan is applying for the trademark of "Meituan E-commerce".
However, in the actual experience, it can be found that the US group is still a bit hasty. Unlike Taobao users who can only associate the goods they have bought in the notes, when the treasure box publishes graphic notes, the user can freely associate different products without consumption, which brings some uncertainty to the authenticity of the notes, contrary to the real requirements in the concept of planting grass. At the same time, meituan e-commerce users obviously rarely participate in the community, and the "planting notes" of many related products are the publisher's shopping reviews a month or even a few months ago, rather than the grass notes actively released. Meituan's frequent actions in the e-commerce business, but in the context of the almost certain pattern of the e-commerce industry, today's Meituan e-commerce is still in the stage of "waiting to be revived".
Meituan e-commerce, how to strike later?
Tuanhao goods, can be called the first generation of meituan traditional retail e-commerce prototype, similar to the model of Pinduoduoduo, the main group purchase, intended to share a piece of the sinking market, in September 2021, NetEase Yanxuan former CEO Liu Xiaogang announced to join the Meituan, responsible for its good goods business, to the Meituan senior vice president and president of the home business group Wang Puzhong reported, Meituan e-commerce began to embark on the road of "strict selection".
"Strict selection" is mainly reflected in the continuous improvement of the supplier threshold of Meituan's good goods, and individual merchants and even ordinary stores of enterprises cannot be settled. The "style" has come up, but the number of merchants has dropped significantly, which is obviously inferior to that of e-commerce giants. In the actual experience, the advantages of Meituan e-commerce are not obvious, compared with the three giants of Taobao, JD.com, and Pinduoduo e-commerce, they have not gone out of their own differentiated paths.
Continuous trial and error is Wang Xing's usual means, e-commerce is one of the priorities of the future of the US group, but how to achieve this end, Wang Xing probably has not drawn the final map, but continues to let the METUan e-commerce develop without borders, and then according to the results of trial and error, cut off the excess vines. Group buying, flash delivery, fresh and traditional e-commerce, Meituan are involved, but in the footsteps of others, it is difficult for Meituan e-commerce to tell a new story.
It is undeniable that the instant delivery system built by Meituan in the community group purchase business has opened up the channels of terminal logistics, and the stations and warehouses laid have also penetrated into lower-tier cities. ”
Traditional e-commerce business is the biggest shortcoming of Meituan e-commerce, if it can be successfully done, then the value that Meituan's 600 million users can generate is immeasurable, and the current Meituan preferred, Meituan flash delivery, Meituan grocery shopping and other businesses can also form a linkage, but in the current situation, Meituan's traditional e-commerce business is difficult to shoulder the big responsibility.
"The first order is cheap." When asked about her impression of Meituan's e-commerce, Meituan user Zhang Wen thought for half a day, "Meituan still orders takeout to use more." Wang Yuan, another who has experienced meituan's traditional retail e-commerce, complained, "There are not as many things on Meituan's good goods as Taobao, and some of my commonly used brands have not been settled at all." ”
In the e-commerce track, although the METUan started late, but the opponent has been clear, the sinking market has Pinduoduoduo, high-end products have JD.com, and the "Ten Thousand Goods Store" Taobao is more than twice as active as Jingdong, which is the second place. If you carefully study the actions of veteran e-commerce players, it is not difficult to find that Pinduoduo is also developing towards high-end products, Jingdong has also begun to accept the sinking market, Taobao directly changed Tmall to Cat Enjoyment after embedding live broadcasts and Small Red Book, and opened self-operated copies.
In the e-commerce track, the appearance of veteran players is becoming more and more similar, new players such as short video platforms and little red books are also catching up, and the desire of the US group to become the "fourth pole" is becoming more and more difficult to achieve, but under the anti-monopoly wind, the old players are no longer strong, and the US group may be able to take this opportunity to tell a new story of e-commerce.
Angel investor Liang Ning once wrote an article called "Is meituan really borderless?" The 10,000-word long article analyzes how the US group frequently achieves "late first-come", and there is a paragraph that "the US group will rethink this market that seems to have been established." For example, meituan found the opportunity for local people to book hotels locally in 2013, and it was not until 2015 that it had the ability to do it. After 3 years in the middle, Ctrip has not called for such a long time? That's the boundary of Ctrip. ”
Today's Meituan e-commerce is once again standing in the position of "latecomer", and the second half of the infinite game is becoming more uncertain in the rapidly changing market environment.