In recent years, "community group buying" has grown barbarically under the intervention of Internet giants and capital, but at the same time, the disorderly market competition environment has also caused major community group buying platforms to fall into growth bottlenecks. Under this, core players such as Tongcheng Life, Ten Hui Tuan, and Orange Heart Preferred retreated one after another. This year, this scene was staged in the US group.
On April 20, many consumers reported that Meituan Preferred had suddenly shut down. The official announcement showed: "Dear customer friends... From April 21, 2022, your pick-up point will temporarily stop service..." According to relevant media disclosures, the scope of the Meituan preferred shutdown is mainly in the northwest region, including Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia and Xinjiang provinces, and only the Shaanxi base camp will be retained.
In this regard, Meituan's preferred customer service said: "This shutdown is only an optimization adjustment, in order to improve the user experience and ensure the stability of the service, but the specific recovery time cannot be determined." However, there is the opposite voice speculation from the outside world: "This move may be that Meituan Preferred is self-help, because the operating costs are too high, resulting in serious losses, and it is not excluded that Meituan Preferred will also make corresponding adjustments in other regions." ”
Losses are the trigger
The Meituan Preferred, which uses "burning money" to squander the land, has always been regarded by the outside world as the main crux of the collapse of the US group's performance. But Wang Xing has always insisted that the "last mile of the community" is worth it, and he will continue to exchange high losses for the victory of this battle. However, contrary to expectations, Meituan Preferred will only complete about 120 billion yuan of GMV in 2021, which is far from the target of 150 billion yuan of GMV.
According to Meituan's 2021 financial report data, Meituan's adjusted net loss in 2021 was 15.6 billion yuan, and the main reason for the loss was the poor performance of meituan's new business and branches, recording an operating loss of 38.4 billion yuan during the reporting period, an increase of 36.6% year-on-year.
In addition, Meituan Preferred was also ordered by the State Administration for Market Regulation to rectify and fined a total of 1.5 million yuan for suspected improper price behavior and using false or misleading price means to lure consumers into trading with it.
Obviously, whether it is the financial report data or the market wind direction, it once again proves that the road to relying on "burning money" to achieve benign development is not feasible, which is why when meituan preferred to shut down the northwest region service, some insiders believe that meituan preferred this is a self-help signal released.
So why does the US group prefer to take the lead in taking the northwest region to open the knife? One word: loss. It is understood that although Meituan has been expanding its business scope to Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai and other northwest regions for more than a year, it has always been in a state of loss. In this regard, some insiders believe that Qinghai, Ningxia and other northwest regions in the geographical environment shows the characteristics of sparse population, and there are objective factors such as relative lack of material resources, and meituan preferred to take root in the northwest region, it is necessary to invest higher logistics infrastructure costs.
It is worth mentioning that in the cost of logistics infrastructure, warehousing costs are an important component. However, at the beginning of this year, Meituan Preferred was reported under real names for "illegal warehousing" in many places, among which Meituan Preferred built cold storage and cold sheds in the Mapletree (Yinchuan) Logistics Park in Yinchuan, Ningxia, and did not do secondary firefighting, and was ordered to rectify.
At that time, some relevant people said that it is not excluded that the preferred operation mode of the Us group has certain requirements for the cold storage, but the construction cost, personnel cost and operating cost are very high, so the Meituan preferred had to choose a short-term lease cold storage, but in this case, the transportation cost should be greatly increased, so the reconstruction of the cold storage or the construction of the cold shed in the warehouse can save costs to a certain extent.
Even in the first-tier city of Shanghai, Meituan's preferred supply chain logistics service provider "Shanghai Jinshan Amber Tenglin Warehousing Co., Ltd." was also ordered by the relevant fire departments to rectify the illegal storage of liquor, edible oil and other Class C products.
In addition, according to the real name of industry insiders, Jinshan Amber Logistics Park has been completed for six or seven years, but it has not passed the government acceptance, so there is no completion filing form. And because there is no real estate certificate, and Shanghai is strictly controlled, Meituan Preferred does not apply for a business license, which is fundamentally an illegal construction of cold storage.
Under the chaos of warehousing, food quality and safety issues have also become the hardest hit areas that Meituan prefers to be criticized by consumers. For example, in Baidu Tieba Bar, some netizens posted: "The smell of meat is definitely soaked in chemicals, and it is completely different from what you bought in the market (the taste difference is super invincible, and the taste is very strange) There is no freshness at all... Chilled products will definitely not be preferred by Meituan in the future. I hope that you Meituan Preferred can self-review. Ignoring quality in order to fight a price war will certainly not go long!!!!! In the following post, some netizens also claimed that they also ate jelly chicken, bluntly saying that they were disgusted and died!
In addition, on the black cat complaint, the search results of "Meituan Preferred" showed that there were nearly 7,000 complaints, most of which were complaints related to quality and safety issues. For example, "After eating the hand-grabbed cake preferred by the US group, there was a stomach pulling water fever and almost fainted!" "Bought a bag of corn in a bag with a shelf life of 18 months. 3.20 Buy 3.30 unpack ready to eat, during which the refrigerator has been put, the result is that the food has been moldy. "Meituan prefers to sell nectarines moldy, after eating diarrhea." Peeking at the leopard, the problems of Meituan Preferred in food safety protection are not small.
With subsidies to seize users, but in the mode of not running through the rush to turn around and cut users leeks, it is not difficult to understand the meituan's preferred broken arm survival.
Sharp layoffs, executive shocks
In fact, the US regiment's preferred "abandoned armor dragging soldiers" has long been in the foreground. At the beginning of April this year, it was exposed by the media that the US group issued a layoff notice internally. Among them, Meituan Preferred is the first business to be adjusted. It is worth mentioning that this is not a new thing, because in February, there were employees of Meituan Preferred who revealed that its internal layoffs began to be large-scale, covering the agent side and the direct generation side, and the research and development position was not clear.
In addition, in January of the same year, Meituan Preferred also carried out a major personnel adjustment within itself. Chen Liang, senior vice president of Meituan, who originally managed the three business units of fast donkey, preferential selection and grocery shopping, suddenly announced that he would leave the front line of business and become a consultant of the company, and would focus on organizational construction and strategic research in the future. The business in his hands will be handed over to Guo Wanhuai, the wife of Wang Xing, vice president of Meituan and founder of Meituan.
As a result, the power structure of the US group is increasingly tending to the "mom-and-pop shop" model. Although everything between family members is easy to discuss, it is convenient for decision-making and implementation, but it is also because everyone does not distinguish between each other, it is easy to cause lack of rules, personal arbitrariness, and once internal contradictions occur, they may fall into a situation of disintegration.
For example, when Li Guoqing and Yu Yu and his wife of Dangdang.com, from the original "talented and beautiful person", to the cup to expose themselves out of the house, to the two sides tear their faces and expose each other's fierce materials, and then to the equity competition. Behind this, there is not only an emotional dispute between the two people, but also an entanglement of interests. At the same time, it also exposes the problems of the "mom-and-pop shop" model.
It is understood that with the growth of Dangdang.com, this "mom-and-pop shop" has more and more problems in internal management. There was once a time when the old employees said that when Li Guoqing and Yu Yu disagreed, the people who did things below did not know who to listen to.
It can be seen that both husband and wife want the company to develop according to their own will. However, the frequent changes in executive decision-making have brought about the continuous change of strategy and the blurring of the company's positioning, which has also laid the groundwork for the future trend of Dangdang.com. In the same way, is Meituan Preferred sure that it can really avoid such a problem?
Takeaway riders
Or become a high-risk group for the spread of a new round of the epidemic
After the change of personnel territory, can Meituan be responsible for capital and shareholders? Of course, this is still a later story, at present, in addition to the long-term difficulty of the US group to make a profit, the US group also needs to face the takeaway riders to bring the epidemic to deliver food, or will become a new round of high-risk groups of epidemic transmission.
It is understood that there have been a number of cases of positive transmission of takeaway workers this month. On April 16, a positive rider in Changchun City, Jilin Province, repeatedly took the form of drilling fences to deliver meals across districts during the diagnosis, and has now been investigated; on April 23, a takeaway rider in Fangshan District, Beijing, was confirmed positive, and 24 risk points have been determined.
It should be emphasized that in order to grab time, many takeaway workers ignore the important link of scanning code registration in the process of picking up and delivering meals, and lack of organized nucleic acid testing. All kinds of chaos is not only the inaction of platform management, but also the manifestation of the uneven quality of practitioners.
Therefore, in order to strengthen the epidemic prevention work, to ensure the normal operation of the takeaway delivery work. On April 23, Hangzhou launched a daily nucleic acid test for riders in the city, carrying out delivery services with negative certificates; in addition, on April 17, the Shanghai Municipal Office of Prevention and Control has already issued a work plan to clarify the testing requirements for relevant urban security personnel, and implement 2+2 nucleic acid detection and antigen detection. At the same time, it is emphasized that relevant enterprises should bear the main responsibility and implement relevant testing requirements.
But you know, as far as Meituan is concerned, the relationship between most of the takeaway riders and them is nothing more than outsourcing. The so-called outsourcing relationship is that Meituan will contract its business to a third-party enterprise, and the third-party enterprise will establish an employment relationship with the takeaway riders, and be responsible for paying wages, labor remuneration, service fees, etc. to the takeaway riders, while Meituan only needs to pay a certain service fee to the third-party enterprise as an employer.
Although the outsourcing model has achieved more than one bird with one stone, not only does it properly avoid the provisions of the labor law that force enterprises to pay social insurance premiums for employees to achieve flexible employment, but also Meituan can also take the special VAT invoice issued by a third party as a tax deduction, reasonable tax avoidance and tax saving.
But at the same time, it is also difficult for Meituan to effectively supervise takeaway riders. So under the tightening of policies, how should the US group take practical actions to implement relevant requirements and ensure the safety of distribution?
The ratio of commercial competition is never a short-term city and a pool, but what can be changed in the long term. For now, the period of barbaric growth of community group buying has passed, and if the METUan preferred to realize Wang Xing's dream of "winning the battle", it is not possible to achieve it simply by "breaking the arm", after all, the future fight is the refined operation and the control of the supply chain.