It sinks to the towns and villages, and flags are planted everywhere.
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “Finance Story Hui” (ID: cjgshui), Author: written / eternal, ten thousand days south, tease the hair, Wen sweet; edit / eternal, Chen Jiying.
At the end of 2020, as giants such as Ali, Meituan, Pinduoduo, and JD.com entered the market one after another, community group purchases “take over” online education and become the hottest outlet in China’s Internet field.
Relying on their own capital and technological advantages, the giants have fully attacked traditional supermarkets and vegetable markets, and have successfully attracted a large number of community consumers by taking advantage of “prices far below the market average” and the convenience of delivery to the community.
“Community group buying” has become a strategic place for giants and unicorns to leverage the sinking market, penetrate into community nodes, attract household consumption, and activate the growth of middle-aged and elderly people.
In the vast counties and townships below the third and fourth tier cities, can the wildly expanding community group buying be able to achieve commercial changes?
“Financial Stories Collection” has divided its troops into multiple teams, surveyed Henan Xiangcheng, Hainan Sanya, Jiangsu Wuxi, Anhui Chuzhou, Shandong Gaomi and other places, and conducted a panoramic scan of the community group buying market outside the Fifth Ring Road.
Group buying is blooming everywhere, and we are attacked by local snakes
“Gaosi Town doesn’t even have takeaways here, but the community group purchases are all over the flag,” Chen Yuan, the 24-year-old Meituan Optimal Group leader, told “Financial Stories.”
The Gaosi town where he is located belongs to Xiangcheng County, Henan. There are more than 60,000 people in the town and more than 100 villages under its jurisdiction.
Like most villages and towns in China, Gaosi does not have takeaways, and there is no Didi. However, Meituan’s preferred pick-up points are blooming everywhere.
“Basically, a person who opens a shop is eligible to be the group leader. My main business is to operate a hot pot seasoning restaurant. More than a month ago, when a promoter visited my door, I joined the platform and became the group leader”, Zhu Tianping, another local delegation leader, told “Financial and Economic Stories.”
Coincidentally, “Financial and Economic Stories” has found that in Gaomi in Shandong, Lai’an County in Anhui, Chuzhou in Anhui, and Wuxi in Jiangsu, community group buying is almost all over the countryside.
Shandong Gaomi Meituan Optimal Group Leader Mu Qing told the “Financial Stories Collection” that in Gaomi, almost every village has a pick-up point, “Meituan Optimal, Orange Heart Optimal, and Lottery Shopping are all here.”< /p>
In this regard, the vice president of an e-commerce platform is not surprised by this. He said, “This is not surprising. I knew a few community group buying companies before, and they hit the township market last year.”
The sinking intensity of community group buying is much higher than that of food delivery or other O2O businesses.
As of December last year, the number of Xingsheng preferred stores alone has exceeded 500,000, covering more than 6,500 cities in 15 provinces across the country, with monthly GMV as high as 4 billion yuan. According to “Late” report, Prosperity Optimal is about to complete a round of investment of up to 3 billion U.S. dollars led by Sequoia Capital.It’s more expensive than a supermarket,” and there is no minimum threshold. “Buy more and buy less will be delivered to your door. Sometimes you can make a few cents with a single order, and you must plan carefully.”
Compared with the community group buying platform, Wang Dali believes that its advantage is “fresh products and reliable quality, so our users mainly repurchase”.
“When it’s good, the order amount will be tens of thousands of yuan a day,” Wang Dali told “Financial Stories.”
In this regard, Mu Qing, the head of the group, told the “Financial Stories”, “Those who do group purchases by themselves are the most competitive, because most of our heads are part-time, and they are full-time.”
Team leader: low threshold, fierce competition, and multiple roles
In the past, Internet giants who had a taste of outside the Fifth Ring Road, if they want to take root outside the Fifth Ring Road, recruit a large number of localization leaders and agents, it is very important.
Chu Fangfang, the preferred agent of Meituan in Chuzhou, Anhui, told “Financial Stories” that the position of marketer mainly recruits sales personnel with local marketing experience and FMCG experience. Their monthly salary is more than 5,000 yuan. Their main responsibilities are , Is the recruitment, training, and assessment of team leaders.
The threshold for a leader is low. Generally speaking, as long as there is a suitable pick-up location, which is convenient for the driver to deliver the goods and the customer to pick up the goods, you can be selected.
Currently, most of the pick-up points are ordinary convenience stores.
The portraits of the heads are mainly concentrated in the mom-and-pop shop groups where women between 25 and 35 years old look at the shop. Such people generally have community WeChat groups, work relatively leisurely, and also have a lot of time to interact and sell online.
Pinduoduo, who is familiar with fission, has also copied this experience in the grocery shopping business, such as supporting the group leader’s level assignment, group leader fission, regional manager, group leader and self-pickup point separation (binding or unbinding) ), the leader’s self-operated products and other functions to maintain the leader and reduce the loss.
With the help of thousands of Malays to form groups, community group buying has exploded in rural areas.
In many areas surveyed by Financial Stories, the number of group leaders can double in two or three months, and the growth rate is much faster than the growth of customers.
Peng Pai, head of the Meituan Optimal Group in Banta Town, Anhui, told the “Financial Stories Collection” that within 400 meters of his home, more than 20 delegation leaders were added in two months.
There is a newly established pick-up point ten meters away. Most of these stores belong to Meituan Optimal and Duoduo Shopping.
Most team leaders are “multiple roles”, and one person spans multiple platforms.
As a result, even the deliveryman was confused. When the platform sales promotion, the order skyrocketed, the deliveryman was unable to deliver the goods, and even found Peng Pai and asked him to deliver the goods on his behalf.
The rapid expansion of the group leader has not only brought prosperity to the platform, but also led to the involution of the group of leaders.
The order volume and delivery volume of some delegation leaders has shrunk significantly, and the internal consumption of some groups in some areasWhen shopping in the supermarket, he has to go shopping for a long time every time, and it takes an hour to go back and forth. Since the use of community group buying, including the selection and pick-up, it will be over at most half an hour, saving time and effort.
However, compared with on-site inspections in supermarkets, community group buying has defects in product quality.
Chen Siwei cannot confirm whether the fruits and vegetables are fresh from the APP page, they can only be identified after the goods arrive. If you want to return the goods, you may waste a lot of time.
Chen Siwei has also stepped on the pit, and on several occasions, the things he received from Meituan Optimal are not new. But considering the low price, he feels that it is reluctantly acceptable, “Bargains can’t be too high.”
However, he only prefers community group purchases during busy workdays. On weekends, he will still go to the supermarket or the vegetable market to make big purchases.
As far as he knows, the pick-up point he often goes to has a maximum daily pick-up volume of 100 pieces. Some pick-up points far away from residential areas are more deserted, and the daily pick-up volume may only be in single digits.
The pace of life in counties and townships is slow. Most people responsible for household purchases still prefer supermarkets and vegetable markets. They can kill time on the one hand, and maintain quality and quantity on the other.
Furthermore, in cities and areas below the third and fourth tier, most of the residents are older and don’t know how to use smartphones, let alone how to place orders.
For this reason, Liu Gong, the leader of the Orange Heart Selection in the Tianya Style Town of Sanya, Hainan, even taught the elderly to use their smartphones to place orders.
According to him, many elderly people are attracted by the platform’s low-cost discounts. They plan to use Orange Heart to buy food, so they ask him about the ordering process, and he is happy to do so.
In most villages and towns, there are not many group leaders like Liu Gong who are enthusiastic about community group buying as their main business, and the market penetration rate of community group buying is still low.
In short, the community group buying that has already taken root in Qianmo Country, whether it can occupy the home field outside the vast Fifth Ring Road in the future may have to be seen. (All interviewees in the text are pseudonyms)