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The flame-out of community group buying, if viewed from the node of the development process of the Internet industry, may become a clear dividing line, the old competitive order has been broken, and the new industry rules are being reshaped.
Author 丨 Pastoral
Edit 丨 nuts
Cover source 丨 Figureworm Creative
The battle of community group buying is over, but it does not seem to be completely over, because from the existing market structure, there is no real winner in the sense.
However, all parties involved in the war could not stand up, and the Ten Hui Regiment was exposed to drastic layoffs, and even the business of the headquarters in Changsha was shut down at one point; xingsheng preferred from the end of last year, no longer opened a new city, but instead focused on consolidating the business of the city that had been opened.
The community group purchase projects of the Internet giants are also not good, the most lamentable of which is Didi's orange heart preferred, which not only drags down Didi's main business, but even after the tens of billions of funds are burned out, it has not left a little echo in the market.
Of course, there are more common issues worthy of attention from players from all sides, how to salvage the cliff-like decline of GMV after the subsidy tide, a large number of regiment leaders fleeing, and how to maintain the shaky distribution network of the platform.
The princes of the community group purchase no longer fight, because they can no longer afford to fight, not only weapons and ammunition are in a hurry, but even the soldiers are running out.
However, in the view of Spiral Jun, the flameout of community group buying has more important significance for the entire mobile Internet industry, which means that the subsidy tactics of flood irrigation in the past are no longer effective, investors and users are no longer so good at cheating, and even from the regulatory level, they are also requiring relevant parties to "not abuse their independent pricing power for vicious price competition.".
In other words, in a more historical sense, this may be the end of the era of mobile Internet navigation, and it is not so easy for giants to easily encircle the land as king.
1
Community group buying is turned off
In the more than a decade of the rise of the mobile Internet, the exchange of subsidies for the market may be the most common expansion path for Internet companies, which has also formed a road of growth of Internet companies with Chinese characteristics, that is, burning money to smash the market - continuous financing - bloody listing - surviving competitors - harvesting the market.
But this is, after all, the most idealized development path, and most companies have not survived to the day of harvesting the market, even if they rely on the financial owners like BAT.
Many companies can't even survive the first stage of burning money, and they have already died in a cruel competitive environment.
But those companies that are lucky enough to survive have indeed achieved winner-take-all, from online car-hailing to shared bicycles, from online group buying to online takeaway, and now players who are still active in the public vision have become oligarchs in the absolute sense of the market.
Therefore, when the community group buying boom hit, preparing enough ammunition and preparing to burn money became the consensus of the vast majority of players participating in the war.
Meituan shouted the slogan of "asking for money to give money, asking people to give people" internally, and Didi CEO Cheng Wei even made a bold statement at the internal full staff meeting, and the investment in the community group purchase business "has no upper limit".
Pinduoduo is more crisp, and at the beginning of the launch of "more to buy vegetables", it has already played the slogan of "billion subsidies".
But it turns out that a mere billion can not leverage this huge market, according to Didi's financial report in the third quarter of 2021, the loss of Orange Heart Preferred has reached 20.8 billion yuan, which not only declares the complete failure of Didi's investment in it, but also dispels the willingness of other players to continue to subsidize little by little.
More importantly, the big hole in the community group buying business is also dragging down the main business of players from all sides, in addition to Didi, Meituan also lost 6.03 billion yuan in new business in the fourth quarter of 2021.
Investors' enthusiasm for community group buying is also gradually fading, and from the second half of 2021, there will be no related investment and financing events on this track.
At the same time, some community group buying enterprises have fallen on the road of charging, in 2021, there have been small players such as honey orange life, spelling and courtesy have been shut down, and after entering 2022, head platforms such as Ten Hui Tuan and Orange Heart Preferred have also reported the news that the building will fall.
After burning out tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of dollars, the community group buying track is still chaotic, and even in the financial reports of some large companies, they have begun to consciously or unconsciously avoid detailed descriptions of the current situation of this business.
A year or two ago, these giants still took this piece of business as a new story of enterprise development, and told the capital market with their eyebrows flying.
2
Say goodbye to the subsidy wars
From the fragrant food that all forces are competing for, to the oil bottles that are now avoided, why the development of community group buying has fallen so fast, in fact, there are multiple factors.
At the end of 2020, the relevant departments required Internet platform enterprises to strictly abide by the "nine no's" for the new format of community group buying, which clearly pointed out that they must not abuse their independent pricing power through low-price dumping, price collusion, price gouging, price fraud, etc.
As soon as this ban came out, many drainage projects of major community group buying platforms were forced to stop, especially the "1 purchase" activities for new customers began to converge, which made the platform suffer a lot of blows in terms of pulling new ones.
At the level of public opinion, the outside world has begun to question the behavior of Internet giants constantly encroaching on new markets by burning money, and the People's Daily has also commented on this, "Don't just worry about the traffic of a few bundles of cabbage and a few pounds of fruit, the sea of stars of scientific and technological innovation, and the infinite possibilities of the future, which is actually more exciting." ”
But the deeper problem is that Internet companies, after getting used to the extensive competition of the past, have begun to become poor in the face of tightening industry policies.
Especially for the business of buying vegetables, the technologies such as big data, supply chain, and digitalization that Internet companies once boasted have not been transformed into actual growth methods, allowing them to stand out in the competition.
Especially after the subsidy tide, the decline in user activity directly reflects the unfamiliarity of platform companies for such businesses, as if after leaving the burning subsidy, all platforms have lost the ability to transform the industry.
In the past, the market environment that everyone faced was that everyone in the industry was burning money, and in the end, there would always be one or two companies that became the only one or two in the industry, but the use habits of consumers have been cultivated, so only a few winners can be selected.
And these winners can also take away all the chips on the table, fill the previous subsidy investment, and incidentally let investors cash out through listing.
But now the environment is different, when everyone suddenly wants to honestly and fairly operate competition, the various platforms will not be, because the output can not keep up with the input, and do not dare to expect to finally achieve a monopoly, so they can only choose to shrink the front line and stop the loss in time.
More importantly, the format of community group buying does not seem to have really cultivated the user's habits like sharing bicycles, online car-hailing and other industries, which certainly has the particularity of the "buying vegetables" scene, but more importantly, the value that the platform can create for users is really limited, especially after getting rid of the "low-price" gimmick, the use scenario of the product has no attachment.
3
Where is the new route?
The battle of community group buying is over, where the next battle of the mobile Internet is, no one can predict, perhaps in a blind life scene, perhaps a new business model of social practice.
But there is no doubt that after this battle, many Internet companies have begun to understand a truth, the past set of ways to fight the world has been bad, investors no longer credulously believe the story of subsidies can change the market, consumers will no longer always bend for low prices, regulators will not hope that there will be another mess like Ofo in the industry.
The era of mobile Internet navigation is over, and Internet companies want to pursue a new growth curve, and they need to pay more attention and innovation.
The visible trend is that large enterprises have begun to take difficult steps of transformation, such as the transfer from the consumer Internet to the industrial Internet, and Ali and Tencent have invested a lot of energy in this area.
Keeping your basic plan is also becoming the consensus of large enterprises, especially large categories such as e-commerce, social networking, and payment, which are facing the impact of new technologies and new needs.
Of course, what is more important is that the overall downturn in the Internet industry in the past one or two years has left the landlord's family with no surplus food.
The falling stock price, the complex and changeable external situation, the uncertainties brought about by the epidemic prevention and control, as well as the regulatory policies that are constantly regulated and revised, coupled with the long-disappeared demographic dividend, have prompted Internet companies to prepare for a new era.
But are the Internet giants really ready, for now, perhaps everyone lacks the determination and courage to reopen new routes.