Image source @ Visual China
Text | Photon Planet, author | He Furong, Editor| Wu Xianzhi
Recently, Tencent has tested a small program for group buying tools "Goose Sharing Group". The launch of goose sharing group means that Tencent is involved in the field of group buying for the first time, so it has received widespread attention.
In the past year, the group buying industry has undergone earth-shaking changes. First, the giants rushed into the community group purchase and burned money to seize the sinking market. The second is the base camp of the US group - to the store group purchase, ushering in the turmoil of the douyin group purchase.
Tencent's entry into group buying at this time seems to have brought more points of view to the competition in the group buying industry.
According to the understanding of Photon Planet, Goose Sharing Group is a service tool for small and micro merchants, which improves transaction efficiency and private domain operation for their WeChat private domain transaction scenarios, and helps small and micro merchants and leaders better monetize private domain traffic.
Goose Sharing Group is still in the stage of internal testing, and its functional attributes are not limited to the traditional sense of community group purchase or in-store group purchase business. Its focus is on making a fuss about WeChat private domain traffic, so the categories and features it can include seem more imaginative.
Aiming at Pinduoduo, benchmarking "fast group"
A "goose sharing group" internal test user told Photon Planet that according to his understanding, the goose sharing group is mainly against the standard "fast group", but the specific landing will wait until after the product exchange meeting on March 1.
Kuaituan is a WeChat community group purchase mini program under Pinduoduo, which helps merchants in the WeChat ecosystem to operate private domain traffic, and was officially launched in May 2020. It includes group buying, registration, help sales, live broadcasting, order management and other functions.
According to public data, in just one year, Kuaituan quickly occupied the Top 1 of the WeChat community group buying Mini Program, ranking 24th in the whole network Mini Program. In addition, the previous official disclosure of Kuaituan group in 2021 target GMV pre-reached 60 billion yuan.
Many categories of goods such as fresh fruits, beauty personal care, home life, digital home appliances, medicine and health, sea shopping goods, and virtual products are all involved in Kuaituan. Kuaituan grew up in WeChat's private domain traffic system, where the idea of everything can take root.
It seems not surprising that the goose group wants to draw a scoop according to the gourd, after all, the traffic is its own, and this is also the advantage of Tencent.
"Goose Sharing Group mainly uses huge WeChat traffic to do private domain e-commerce. Suitable for supply chain and large team leaders to start a business, local regional small and micro merchants can also make good use of the Goose Group Buying Tool to do their own business. The above-mentioned person involved in the internal test said.
Goose Sharing Group actually integrates the common characteristics of e-commerce and group buying.
However, compared with traditional e-commerce platforms, the difference is mainly in the private domain of traffic. Compared with community group buying, Tencent is only a provider of group buying tools, and the platform does not participate in operation, which shows its asset-light characteristics. In addition, the platform brings together e-commerce or physical merchants, or even ordinary individuals, so the categories of goods covered may be more extensive than community group purchases.
However, the generalization of social e-commerce merchants and goods is also accompanied by consumers' doubts about their quality, after-sales and other services. In this scenario, high-frequency and low-cost products are often best-sellers, which may also be the best choice for goose-sharing groups to benchmark fast groups.
Traditional integrated e-commerce occupies Ali, JD.com, Pinduoduo and other players, while Douyin and Kuaishou are also cutting through short videos, and it is difficult for integrated e-commerce to tell new stories. Based on the ecological characteristics of WeChat and the consumer psychological characteristics of users under the community model, it may also be a differentiated path to cut from small and micro merchants.
Micro-business or e-commerce?
What is Tencent's biggest advantage? There seems to be no second answer to this question. With more than 1.2 billion WeChat users in hand, its social status based on WeChat and QQ has reached an unshakable point.
The peaking of public domain traffic growth is already a common problem faced by major platforms, especially for the e-commerce industry, making a fuss about private domain traffic has become a major trend of commercial breakthroughs such as platforms and brands.
Tencent is the least short of private domain traffic, and where there is traffic, there will be business. Although Tencent has repeatedly lost battles in e-commerce, the e-commerce heart has always been there, and the goose group can be regarded as Tencent's re-increase in e-commerce.
On February 22, there was news that Tencent's main trend of playing e-commerce was about to shut down. In addition, the previously launched "Tencent Convergence" and "Cloud Shopping Global" are still in continuous operation, but they have always been tepid.
Whether the goose sharing group will follow the old road of Tencent e-commerce cannot be concluded in vain. It can be found that Goose Enjoy Group deliberately avoids its own shortcomings in the field of e-commerce, while highlighting its advantages.
As we all know, the most important test of e-commerce is the ability to perform contracts in terms of supply chain and logistics. Tencent defines the attributes of goose sharing group as a "tool", that is, the platform will not personally do it, mainly because the merchant relies on the goose group to facilitate transactions, and then achieve commercial transformation within the WeChat ecosystem. Services related to supply chain, logistics, after-sales and other links are mainly completed by the merchants themselves, which avoids the platform's heavy asset investment in the business.
In addition to avoiding shortcomings, Goose Sharing Group may maximize the use of WeChat's social resources. The above-mentioned insider said that there is almost no threshold for becoming the head of the group. First of all, the platform does not have the so-called threshold fee, and there is no mandatory requirement for the identity of the leader of the group, even ordinary people without supply chain support can become the leader of the helper to earn commissions.
In addition, the above-mentioned people involved in the internal test said that goose sharing group does not seem to have obvious regulations and restrictions on commodity categories, merchant types, and delivery scope and methods, mainly depending on the attributes of merchants and the ability to provide services. "The most important thing is to develop more regimental leaders to sell goods."
This model is characterized by flexibility, good and bad, and it needs to be tested by service capabilities while maximizing the spread of the stalls. Compared with the fast tuantuan, the sharp increase in users is accompanied by the problem of fake goods and imperfect after-sales.
Goose Sharing Group clearly stated that it is facing small and micro merchants, and at the moment when the traffic of traditional e-commerce platforms is becoming more and more expensive, this will undoubtedly promote some long-tail merchants to take root here, but it will also face mixed challenges.
The model of "everyone can be the leader of the group" seems to be back to the era of the proliferation of micro-businesses. The operation mode of Goose Sharing Group relies on WeChat's private domain traffic, and the leader can share goods to the circle of friends, WeChat group or send them to WeChat friends to achieve transactions.
This seems to be the re-evolution of micro-business in the WeChat ecosystem, the previous communication mode of micro-business is biased towards sharing in the circle of friends, and then private message transactions, the intervention of goose sharing group will change the model into an e-commerce mini program one-click purchase. While the transaction efficiency is improved, it may attract an influx of a large number of micro-business groups.
As a daily communication tool, if the circle of friends, WeChat group, and private message chat box are filled with various group messages, does WeChat go against the original intention?
It is difficult to have both social and economic effects
In the era of mobile social networking, the digitization of "people" drives the people and goods yard from fragmentation to integration, so more contact points for conversion and transaction are derived. Under this opportunity, Tencent is driving the digital upgrading of retail in a continuous manner.
"Goose Sharing Group is also one of Tencent's smart retail strategies." said the above-mentioned person. Relying on the WeChat traffic pool, reconstruct the human goods yard for small and micro merchants.
Traditional e-commerce has more popular attributes for the matching of human goods yards, such as meeting high-frequency demand and concentrating on standard products. In the social scene, circles, hobbies, etc. are all factors that can trigger transactions, and Goose Sharing Group seems to have the potential to develop an incremental e-commerce market.
Goose Sharing Group has reserved a place for physical merchants, supply chain manufacturers, long-tail merchants, or ordinary individuals.
Taking physical merchants as an example, the digital transformation of the real economy has become a general trend in recent years, especially since the epidemic, the consumption habits of users have been further online. In this process, the challenges and opportunities of the real economy coexist, and while the purchasing power offline has plummeted, many brick-and-mortar merchants have begun digital transformation.
A WeChat Mini Program developer said that before, the transformation of physical merchants to online models such as community e-commerce, most of them chose to develop their own Mini Program malls to launch products. For these merchants, they can directly open the leader online products, and there is no need to develop small programs.
Undoubtedly, the launch of goose sharing group provides convenience for the digital transformation of physical merchants, while reducing costs and expenses.
Community group buying, represented by Meituan Preferred, Duoduo buying vegetables, etc., has been criticized by the market, mainly because its profitability cannot keep up with the rate of burning money, coupled with low timeliness, uneven product quality and other issues, and there are doubts about sustainability.
Goose Sharing Group helps local merchants to transform to online or will directly avoid the drawbacks of the community group buying model, and create a new paradigm of community e-commerce based on local merchants.
Moreover, community e-commerce itself is a kind of supplementary consumption, and online and offline collaboration based on local merchants may be more cost-effective than the heavy asset investment of community group buying enterprises.
In the context of social benefits, the goose group seems to have a promoting effect on the transformation of the real economy and the commercial realization of small and micro merchants. Its tool features amplify the service attributes, but the tool's asset-light model also increases the uncertainty of its subsequent development.
E-commerce is the Red Sea market, whether it is the three traditional e-commerce platforms, or relying on live broadcasting and trembling, each is in a state of card competition, each has a differentiated advantage.
Goose Sharing Group was born on WeChat, there is no shortage of traffic, and the accumulation of logistics and supply chain is missing. In the three elements of the human cargo yard, it will put the role of "people" to the maximum, highlight the advantages to avoid shortcomings.
Nowadays, the e-commerce industry has entered a state of deep competition, the desire for consumer satisfaction has been continuously raised, and the performance service ability of e-commerce platforms is closely related to whether consumers choose or not, such as JD.com's "fast".
In the face of more picky consumers, Goose Sharing Group emphasizes serving small and micro businesses at the same time, or will weaken the service for consumers.
In this way, it is not easy for the goose group to break the spell of Tencent e-commerce.