Douyin's challenge to Meituan's confidence comes from thousands of celebrity Internet celebrities

Celebrity Internet celebrities gather on Douyin and bring goods to buy packages

The competition between Douyin and Meituan began to heat up.

During the Mid-Autumn Festival National Day holiday, the local life market ushered in a wave of consumption peaks. According to data from Meituan's statistics, from September 29 to October 4, the scale of national catering dine-in consumption increased by 254% compared with the same period in 2019.

Behind this, we see that the emerging form of "group buying with goods" has played an important role in promoting and undertaking the outbreak of catering consumer demand.

During the long holiday, an obvious change is that more and more celebrities and Internet celebrities began to live broadcast catering group buying packages on Douyin. For example, stars Wang Zulan, Fan Shixi, host Li Hao, Internet celebrity "Woo la La" and so on.

Celebrity Internet celebrities buy goods in Douyin group (Source: Bullwhip)

In their live broadcast room, most of the group buying packages sold come from chain restaurants such as KFC and McDonald's. Thanks to their own delivery capabilities, consumers can choose to use them in stores or request delivery after buying coupons, which largely ensures the coverage of the audience and the freedom of coupon scenarios.

In fact, as early as this year's "618" period, Douyin Life Service held the "618 Group Ticket Festival" activity, inviting many stars such as Huang Shengyi, Liu Genghong, Marco, Qi Wei, Wang Zulan, Yang Di and many other stars to participate in group buying and bringing goods.

Among them, the total GMV of Huang Shengyi's two live broadcasts reached 226 million, and the GMV of stars such as Marco, Medina, Wang Zulan, Yang Di, Zhang Meng and other stars also successfully exceeded 10 million in a single live broadcast.

At that time, several live broadcasts could be said to be the first large-scale test of the water group buying by celebrities, and also promoted many MCN institutions to increase their attention to the local life market.

After nearly 4 months, the Douyin group buying and bringing goods ecology has become more mature, and many celebrities have begun to take the initiative to bring goods related to local life.

The demand that broke out during the long holiday period was also efficiently undertaken by Douyin. Official data shows that from September 29 to October 3, Douyin netizens posted 57.45 million food, drink and entertainment content, an increase of 73% over the same period last year. Correspondingly, Douyin wine hotel orders increased by 9 times year-on-year.

Douyin life service long holiday data (Source: Douyin Life Service Business Observation)

In addition, Douyin also disclosed that more than 6 million life service group buying experts posted more than 26 million videos during the long holiday, with a total of more than 1.9 billion likes. Shop explorers such as "Lovely Couple", "Sun Daye" and "Tom Take You Flying" have also begun to emerge in the field of group buying and goods, and have achieved good results.

It can be said that today's Douyin life service is completely on the right track. The live broadcasts and short videos of celebrity Internet celebrities not only promote the development of Douyin-related businesses, but also find a new growth point for themselves.

Douyin Meituan does live broadcasts and walks on different paths

When Douyin's group buying was in full swing, we saw that Meituan on the other side was not idle.

According to Meituan's recently released 2023 interim report, the revenue of its core local commercial segment was 51.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 39.2%. Moreover, according to Meituan, merchants participating in activities such as Meituan's takeaway "God Coupon Festival" and "God Demand" have achieved significant growth in transaction volume and acquisition of new customers.

The "God Seeker" mentioned here is the official live broadcast channel provided by Meituan for platform merchants. At the same time, Meituan has also launched a series of official live broadcast rooms for hotels, tourism, fitness, entertainment, beauty and other subdivided local life businesses.

In the field of live broadcasting, Meituan's user mind may not be as good as Douyin, but its advantage is that it is more efficient. When consumers open Meituan, they originally have a strong consumption purpose, and Meituan brings goods in the form of the platform's official live broadcast, which plays an endorsement role, which largely ensures the conversion rate and write-off rate of the live broadcast.

In order to promote the popularity of the live streaming business, we also see that Meituan spares no effort in marketing through celebrities. For example, in July this year, Liu Yifei was invited as a contemporary spokesperson, and then stars Huang Zitao, Meng Ziyi, well-known e-sports player UZI and other "live broadcast meals" were invited to further expand their influence among young people.

Huang Zitao "live broadcast with rice" in Meituan (Source: Meituan Live Broadcast)

On the eve of the release of the interim report, Meituan also issued an open letter to all employees, announcing the promotion of Li Shubin, the head of Meituan's platform, to the company's senior vice president, who is the leader of Meituan's live broadcast business. Meituan officially set up a live broadcast middle platform in March this year, and Li Shubin's team provided technical support for it.

Judging from these signs, Meituan is obviously serious about the live broadcast business. Compared with Douyin, a significant difference between Meituan Live is that it chooses a more secure form of "platform broadcasting" - the platform negotiates with brand merchants and sells them uniformly in the live broadcast room, while merchants self-broadcast and influencers bring goods.

On the one hand, this is because the user minds of Meituan Live have not yet been fully established, and the related business is still in the exploration stage. And in terms of celebrity resources, it is difficult for Meituan to compete directly with the content platform of Douyin.

Under this premise, Meituan's primary consideration is how to convert more platform users under the premise of ensuring the sales/write-off rate of group purchase products, and then seek more growth externally.

On the other hand, one of the core ideas of Meituan's live broadcast is to "create explosive products". Meituan Takeaway previously said that "live broadcast" promoted its upgrade from the single-wheel drive of the "shelf system" to the two-wheel drive of "shelf + explosive products".

For example, "God Seeker" is the "outlet" created by Meituan Takeaway's heavy resources, focusing on the consumption mentality of big-name explosive products and low prices, helping restaurant chain brands release new products, seasonal promotions, and rush orders.

Meituan "sharpshooter" and other live broadcast rooms (Source: Meituan App screenshot)

Through the live broadcast of explosive products, its high concurrent and large traffic can promote consumers to form brand imprints, and at the same time, the shelves can undertake new members brought by explosive products, forming long-term growth.

In the final analysis, Meituan wants to provide new marketing tools for brands and amplify brand voice through live broadcasting. At present, the idea of Douyin group buying and bringing goods is more to cultivate the mentality of the life service business among brands and consumers, so it is necessary to further expand the influence of the platform in the local life field through the resource advantages of celebrities.

With different purposes, Douyin and Meituan's live broadcasts are naturally on different paths.

"Live broadcasting" breathes new life into local life

Nowadays, it seems that the three live broadcast forms of store self-broadcasting, platform agency broadcasting, and talent bringing goods have their own advantages and shortcomings. Which is stronger or weaker still needs to be tested by time.

But what is certain is that "live broadcasting" has become the key to the future development of the local life market, injecting new vitality into it.

For example, in addition to Meituan and Douyin, platforms such as Kuaishou, Channels, and even Alipay have chosen to use live streaming to cut into the local life market.

Looking back at the past few years, Meituan stood out from the original Thousand Regiments War and encountered a rare opponent, and at the same time, no platform dared to go head-to-head with Meituan in the traditional shelf form. Live/short video is a new starting line, as long as there is traffic, there is a chance to convert. On this new track, even Meituan has to slowly explore from scratch.

According to iMedia consulting data, it is expected that the scale of the online catering take-out market will reach 1,746.9 billion yuan in 2025, and the scale of local life services will exceed 2.5 trillion yuan. In the face of such a huge and potential market, it is difficult for Internet platforms with live broadcast conditions not to be moved.

Online catering takeaway market size forecast (Source: iMedia Consulting)

However, it is worth noting that for local lifestyle businesses, how much growth live streaming can bring is still unknown.

From the perspective of the platform, as long as the group purchase coupons are sold and successfully written off, they will always have benefits. Merchants who want to ensure profit margins while marketing live streaming also need to consider many factors.

For example, in terms of the simplest cost, merchants need to pay at least labor costs, commodity discounts, investment costs, etc. For local merchants whose profit margins are not high, live streaming is likely to be a loss of money.

This is why the main role of local life live streaming is still platforms and talents, while merchant self-broadcasting is concentrated on large chain brands. At present, on platforms such as Meituan and Douyin, it can be seen that most of the local businesses that have begun to try live streaming are also businesses in high-margin categories such as leisure and entertainment, and independent restaurants and other businesses are difficult to afford the cost behind this.

Therefore, from the current situation, live streaming is more like a marketing tool for large chain brands in local life, guiding traffic to the head more and more concentrated.

But what is more worth looking forward to is that one day "live broadcast" can play a universal value for countless local small and medium-sized businesses and promote the digital transformation of businesses at the tail end of the industry - this is the direction that is really worth the efforts of major platforms.

Author | Li Ying