Now that a year has passed since the "100 model war", Meituan seems to be extremely low-key when domestic Internet companies are fighting around AI models. Such as Baidu's Wenxin Yiyan, Ali's Tongyi Qianwen, Tencent's Mixed Yuan, ByteDance's Skylark, 360's Zhibrain, but Meituan's large model products are almost invisible, you must know that Wang Xingke once said in the circle of friends, "The AI large model makes me excited about the huge productivity that will be created, but also worried about its impact on the whole world in the future." ”
A few days ago, the group's AI products in the true sense of the word finally came. According to some news, Meituan has tested the AI assistant "Ask Xiaobao" for C-end users on the Meituan takeaway app on a small scale, which is a takeaway intelligent assistant product based on the Raccoon model, which can provide users with food and beverage recommendations, gift suggestions and other services.
It is reported that "Ask the Pouch" can automatically match the takeaway products that meet the user's consumption intention according to the keywords or key sentences searched by the user. For example, a search for "gifts for girlfriends" and "ask for pouches" will recommend flowers, chocolate boxes, aromatherapy and other products, and categorize them for users to filter and shop according to their needs.
In fact, "Ask the Pouch" is not Meituan's first AI product, after they launched their first AI product "Wow" in November last year. It's just that because "Wow" focuses on AI social networking, and Meituan has almost no influence in this field, "Wow" naturally disappeared from the public's field of vision.
Therefore, the "Ask Pouch" combined with its main business is Meituan's first attempt to use AI to empower its business, and it may be the product that Meituan wants to see. After all, when asked by the media why Meituan "lost its voice" in the competition of large models, relevant people in Meituan said, "Meituan should not only do large models, but also combine with its own business, and do the vertical field of large models, and there are too many directions, and they are still exploring." ”
Compared with AI social networking, it is obviously more meaningful for Meituan to use AI to empower local life services. The product itself is not complicated, it is basically a concretization of the capabilities of the Meituan raccoon model, and it is a chatbot that specializes in specific tasks. However, for Meituan takeaway users, the emergence of "Ask the Pouch" will improve their experience.
After all, for many people, "what to eat today" is a question that needs to be considered. Since the main users of Meituan Takeaway are basically urban white-collar workers or school students, the life trajectory of this group of people is relatively fixed, basically revolving around schools, offices, and homes. At the same time, the increment of takeaway merchants is often limited, so these two realities lead to the fact that users who have been using Meituan Takeaway for a long time will inevitably face the same problem, that is, the surrounding takeaways have basically eaten and lost their freshness.
At this time, "Ask the Pouch" can provide an option for users who are stuck in a difficult choice. In addition, as the concept of healthy life is becoming more and more important, how to eat healthy and delicious has also become a concern for many consumers, and providing users with reasonable recipes has also become a popular track for Internet content creation. Based on the knowledge base of the large model, "Ask the Sachet" can provide users with qualified recipes.
It is not difficult to find that "Ask the Pouch" is basically equivalent to a chatbot launched by Meituan based on a large AI model for local life service scenarios. And the reason why Meituan launched "Ask the Pouch" is also very simple, because this kind of AI assistant will greatly promote the user's purchase behavior. Whether it is Taobao in the domestic market or Amazon overseas, it has been proved that the AI shopping assistant, which understands products better than the acquaintances around consumers and will not be swayed by emotions, will really be favored by many users.
The birth of "Ask the Pouch" is more like a defensive measure carried out by Meituan in the face of increasingly fierce market competition in the local life service track. As short video platforms such as Douyin join the competition in the local life service market, the pressure on Meituan has intensified, which has directly suppressed the imagination of its core business growth. After all, Douyin, which has traffic in hand, has entered the local life service scene, which has actually brought about an impact that Meituan did not expect before, that is, consumers' purchase scenarios have migrated.
Nowadays, with the emergence of super apps, the consumption habits of domestic users are also quietly changing, and entertainment and consumption can be solved in one stop, such as users swiping food videos on Douyin and then placing orders, which has become a common phenomenon. With its content advantage, Douyin's ability to match transactions has also reached a higher level, because compared with Meituan, Douyin will be closer to consumers. This is also the reason why in 2023, Meituan will set up a live broadcast middle platform, add a large number of live content to the Meituan Takeaway App, and launch a short drama channel on the Meituan App.
It's a pity that for a long time, in the perception of users, Meituan appeared as a takeaway and group buying platform, and there are natural disadvantages in terms of content, which naturally cannot change the minds of users in a short period of time. Therefore, it is almost inevitable that some users will lose from Meituan to Douyin, so how to consolidate the existing existing users has become a problem that Meituan has to consider.
Although it is one thing to provide users with larger coupons and subsidize with real money, it is naturally another thing to launch the "ask pouch" to make the user's experience better.