"It can be said that I can survive only because of the head of our community."
Many Shanghai residents said that although Meituan buys vegetables and Dingdong buys vegetables every day, the success rate of rushing is not high, but it is a community group purchase that is active in the community group, which has become the main source of their daily necessities during the epidemic.
Netizens can be seen everywhere on social media discussing the shanghai regimental leader, #group buying vegetables#, #my regiment leader my group#, successively appeared on Weibo hot search. Some Shanghai netizens said that they added dozens of group buying groups, "the category is extremely subdivided, from bread and milk to cola and bananas." Even Xu Xin, an investor in Dingdong to buy vegetables, could not help but ask for help in the community group, "Which neighbor can pull me to the 'dumpling bread group'?" ”
Usually, a community group purchase is how it works: members of the community with material resources voluntarily become the head of the group and contact suppliers to coordinate the materials; count the number of people participating in the group purchase and the required materials in the community group, and initiate online group buying; the group leader organizes volunteers, packs and sorts the goods, and sends them to the homes of residents participating in the group purchase.
In order to grab shopping funds, the 24-year-old Mo Ran joined several WeChat group buying groups, the leader of the group will use the small program to organize group buying from time to time in the group, generally 30, 50, 100 people into a group, the minimum 1 box of purchase, "the head of the group directly contacted the supplier, if the group, there are drivers specially driven over." ”
However, the process of organizing a successful group purchase is extremely cumbersome. According to DT Finance, a leader of the Baoshan District once collapsed because of the statistics of the list of participating groups, "Some people will not see clearly, do not write how many packages they want; some people will not buy group, have been @ you, ask me how many packages; and some people do not write how many in the community." From initiating the group purchase to sorting out the list, the leader of the group spent two and a half days.
Because of this, a number of community group buying tool products that were once only active in a small range, such as Kuaituan and Group Solitaire, have been paid more attention to, and Tencent documents, graphite documents, flying book documents, and even questionnaire stars have also accelerated their circulation in various community groups.
Users can't grab the goods on the Meituan and Dingdong, why can the leader of the community get the goods smoothly?
"There is actually no shortage of materials in Shanghai, but now the chain between retail ports and consumers is broken." Cui Lili, a professor at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and who organized many group buying activities in this community, said in an interview with Ji Di that in the past, consumers could deliver through online instant delivery, or online e-commerce delivery by express delivery, or they could go to offline retail to buy. However, due to the control of the epidemic, the last two routes have all been cut off, leaving only instant delivery.
"However, the manpower and material resources of instant delivery are also limited, and the so-called grab of vegetables in Shanghai is to grab the online instant delivery resources of Dingdong to buy vegetables and hema." The combination of the group leader + volunteers has re-established the chain between retail and consumers.
In the past few years, the operation mode of the Internet has been platform-based and expanded upstream and downstream, but when the complete sales chain is cut into independent individuals by the epidemic, it is difficult for the platform to organize enough teams to supply the whole city in a short period of time, and the small corps-style combat method seems to be more effective.
A
Xiaoxue, a 26-year-old short video planner who lives in Shanghai's Putuo District, after the outbreak of the epidemic in Shanghai, Xiaoxue, who was trapped at home, reused community group buying mini programs such as Kuaituan and quickly found organizations.
Under the leadership of the current leader, she spent more than 200 pieces to place an order vegetable package, and received the goods as she wished the next day, "The key to success is still a reliable leader." ”
In the impression of many people, the typical model of community group buying is a platform model such as buying more vegetables, Meituan preferred, and prosperous preferred. But this model has a natural disadvantage, that is, in the non-special period of normal food supply, it is difficult for the platform to make a profit.
In July 2021, Tongcheng Life of "3 years and 8 rounds of financing" officially declared bankruptcy; in March 2022, according to interface news, all the businesses of the shihui tuan in the national cities have been shut down, and the company has entered the aftermath stage; the only surviving Xingsheng Preferred in the old three groups, from July last year, completely stopped the market entry in undeveloped areas and the construction of new regional distribution stations, shut down unprofitable online stores and implemented layoffs, and in January this year, Xingsheng Preferred even began to sell women's clothing.
Not only startups, but also community group buying platforms of large Internet companies have also encountered development bottlenecks.
The disadvantages of the platform model of community group buying are clearly visible - the demand is scattered, the loss is serious, the logistics cost is high, and in the non-special period, users are often reluctant to accept the premium, and the platform naturally falls into long-term losses.
In this case, it is better to sell water than to personally take a shovel to pan for gold. There have been big players breaking into the community group buying market, but this time, they are not personally down, but only provide group buying tools, and the business model is to extract transaction service fees from them.
In 2019, WeChat launched the group solitaire function to facilitate the participation and organization of activities for group members, and the function of this free service is also relatively simple; in March 2020, Pinduoduo launched the Fast Tuantuan Mini Program, which was in the early days of the outbreak of the new crown, and pinduoduo gave the introduction that merchants can launch the commodity group purchase page through the fast group group, and the community consumer initiates group purchase, and after reaching the number of people, it is delivered to the community door by the merchant.
Although Kuaituan was born in the early days of the epidemic, it has been active in the micro-business and private domain industries in the past two years and is not known to the public. After the outbreak of the epidemic in Shanghai, more similar products emerged.
According to Tech Planet, in February this year, Tencent's internal test group purchase tool Small Program Goose Enjoy Group, for small and micro merchants, for WeChat private domain transaction scenarios, to improve transaction efficiency and private domain operation of the service tool. However, the goose group that is in internal testing has a strong sense of existence in this Shanghai epidemic.
For example, Tencent documents, Feishu documents, and even questionnaire stars have also joined this tool war of community group buying.
Recently, it has been circulated on the Internet that dozens of ByteDance employees in the community push the neighborhood committee to work every day, requiring at least two groups per day, and summarizing all kinds of goods needed. They are using the Flying Book document under the byte.
Cui Lili, the leader of the group known as the "Shanghai Regiment Leader", has used many group buying tools. In an interview with Ji Day, Cui Lili concluded that when there were not many orders at the beginning, they used Tencent documents, filled in the information by the head of the community, and shared with the supplier by the docking person. "As the number of regimental commanders increased, we felt that this was inefficient, and every time a new regimental commander came in, it took a lot of energy to explain."
In the middle, Cui Lili's team once used the small program of kuaituantuan, but kuaituan would produce a 1% handling fee, and there was a limit to the funds that could be transferred every day; starting from April 8, they began to use questionnaire stars, questionnaire stars can be booked at any time, pulling lists are clearer, and the information of the regiment leader is also a kind of protection.
B
The advantage of community group buying initiated by the group leader is that the threshold for opening the group is low, and it is easy to quickly form a group with the help of community activities. Since the outbreak of the epidemic in Shanghai in March, the WeChat index of community group buying tools has soared.
The person in charge of the fast group business has introduced that its group purchase model is divided into two categories, one is that the town government becomes the head of the group, providing grain, oil, rice noodles, fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy drugs and other guarantee materials; the other is the self-help mode of the group leader, that is, the supply enterprises and merchants directly serve as the group leader, quickly collect the front-end residents' material needs through the community WeChat group, and at the same time, through the community volunteer team, realize the centralized distribution of materials, and realize the "last 100 meters" closed loop.
In fact, before the emergence of the epidemic in Shanghai, these distribution tools were actually variants of micro-businesses. Many netizens have been pulled into the group buying group and group group by relatives and friends, but it is different from the same regional distribution of community group buying, and the delivery method of this group purchase group is the logistics distribution of traditional e-commerce, and the goods are not limited to melons, fruits and vegetables.
Nowadays, there is a third model under the epidemic, that is, the individual becomes the leader of the group, and then uses WeChat groups and circles of friends, Weibo and other channels to release group purchase information, and the group leader initiates group purchase within the community, usually the leader is a resident of the nearby community.
In community group buying, the head of the group is the core person who bears all responsibilities. Cheng Min, the regimental commander who has experienced leading the regiment several times, believes that "it is best to be the management of the community as the leader of the regiment, and it is best to have rich experience in management and coordination." ”
Cheng Min also made a detailed group purchase mind map, from the analysis of community demand to the receipt of goods, and the inventory of group purchase experience. There are many similar professional leaders on Weibo, so that Weibo also appeared a topic #Shanghai Leader's Ceiling#, and rice circle girls, employees of large factories, and advertisers have become the leaders of the group and made group buying operation guides in their respective communities.
Lu Yuanyuan, who was the head of the regiment for the first time, was a bit busy, she volunteered to be the leader of the regiment in order to buy milk, but being the leader of the regiment was not so simple: first of all, the suppliers encountered were very busy, and the phone could not be called all day; after arranging volunteer delivery, they also had to deal with the buyer's claim to miss the order to apply for a refund, and finally not only did not earn a penny, but every day was busier than work, plus a day to dock with countless people, people can easily fall into a state of irritability at any time.
C
The rise of community group buying tools is essentially a special period, and the material operation mode of scattered combat is more flexible and efficient than the platform model.
In the platform mode, the platform needs to mobilize multiple links such as inter-provincial logistics, city warehouses, urban access, logistics personnel allocation, etc., and in order to operate on a large scale, the resources required for each link are quite high, and the difficulty in special periods can be imagined.
According to 36Kr, in order to ensure the smooth flow of goods in the city, the top priority is to get the pass. "Internet retail companies such as Hema, Pinduoduo, and Dingdong have all been given valuable passes — but they are understaffed in other links, resulting in a sharp decline in distribution capacity." And the strict pass conditions have turned away many logistics companies that are not so big. ”
The leaders of the group with supplier resources can act cheaply in all aspects. According to DT Finance, a group leader living in Shanghai's Jing'an District was born in event planning and knew friends with resources, so he volunteered to become the leader of the group.
However, with the surge in orders during the epidemic, this private group buying model that relies on community group buying software has gradually begun to expose problems.
Some residents complained on Weibo that they had encountered an unreliable regimental leader, and after paying the money for the goods, they kicked them out of the group chat.
Because the group buying tool is not a platform, involving other aspects such as supplier docking, volunteer distribution, etc., it is also necessary for the head of the group to think of his own way, and there will inevitably be various flaws in the process, such as some residents will complain, the lack of goods is less than two pounds, and the goods cannot be received.
Of course, the regimental commanders were also full of complaints. Tuan Changchunxiao encountered a bunch of bad things in the group purchase group of 200 people: even if the arrival date was said in advance, there were still people in the group every day who issued a serial reminder of death; often encountered the owner claiming that the stock was out of stock and wanted to refund; and once did not reply to the message in the group in time, a girl actually said that she wanted to call the police... Troubled by all kinds of trivialities, she did not want to continue after a group.
The community group buying tool that has broken up in the epidemic to support the supply of materials for Shanghai citizens is also likely to end with the end of the epidemic.
(In the text, Mo Ran, Xiao Xue, Cheng Min, Lu Yuanyuan, and Chun Xiao are pseudonyms)
Resources:
"Community Group Buying Failure and Retreat", Lianshang Network Information;
"Community Group Buying Song Finally Dispersed", Yifan YIFAN;
"My 100 Days as the Leader of the Fast Tuan", New Retail Business Review;
"2021, Community Group Buying Cooling |Kr", 36Kr;
"Community Group Buying under the Epidemic in Shanghai", Operation Research Agency;
"The Daily Life of 3 Shanghai Regiment Leaders: Tired and Difficult to Be Blocked", DT Finance;