The ambition of community group buying is not just selling fresh food.

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Text | Special Observers Chen Chen ( Co-founder and Co-founder of Ten Hui Group )

Edit | Huang Zhen 曜

In a sinking market,

Community group purchase business model is verified

During the epidemic, it was difficult to travel and buy vegetables, which led to a surge in demand for fresh produce. The advantages of community group purchases were stimulated. The government is also guiding community group purchases to solve the daily purchase of goods. problem.

During the epidemic, we saw the main demands of community group purchases:

1. The biggest demand is safety, and it doesn’t just mean that the place to shop is safe. Consumers also care about whether the goods are safe.

2. Fresh, Chinese people ’s catering habits are vegetables, eggs, and cereals. During the epidemic, the demand for fruits and vegetables was very large.

3. Price and cost performance have always been one of the main advantages of community group buying. We have found an interesting situation. Taking Wuhan as an example, everyone is no longer buying a pound and a half, but a bag and a bag. Buy, in response to this situation we have also launched a vegetable package such as 9.9 yuan and 10 pounds to meet consumer demand.

In the community group buying model, there are only four links from the origin to the consumer, which are the origin / supplier, warehouse, driver, and group leader. Therefore, not only the freshness of the products can be guaranteed, coupled with strict disinfection and epidemic prevention measures and contactless distribution, the frequency of personnel contact and product exposure can be effectively reduced, the health of consumers and heads can be protected to the greatest extent, and the virus transmission route can be cut off. At the same time, we increased the proportion of fresh products in the commodity market, coordinated supplier resources, increased the supply of fresh products, and resolved the actual pain points of users. Shihui Group as a nationwide community freshness platform The number of users and orders has increased significantly at this stage. Taking Wuhan as an example, our order volume has increased by 3-4 times.

Four traditional e-commerce development in fresh, social, sinking markets and offlineShortcomings and pain points, the community group buying model can “make up for shortcomings.”

First of all, the main categories of community group purchases are fresh products. For the fresh products category, from the commodity market to the deep cultivation of the supply chain, community group purchases are higher than other traditional e-commerce platforms.

Second, relying on social networking, the head of the group is an important social node. The head of the group helps the platform reduce the three costs of renewal, user retention, and logistics performance. For the platform, the substantial reduction in customer unit price can be quickly and effectively Open sinking market. Then, the social fulfillment mode is used to crowdsource logistics performance to the group leader. The group leader establishes various forms of offline community self-collection points. The community group purchase and traditional e-commerce are deeply integrated to achieve an ecological “closed loop” and make community group purchase targeted. The shortcomings of traditional e-commerce are “finished.”

The epidemic has particularly affected catering and offline retail, and community group purchases have also attracted the attention of traditional companies, such as Haidilao and Snow Beer, which have also stepped into the field of community group purchase. Adapt to market development.

Community group buying is closer to the community’s new retail

I think this epidemic has caused new retail to shift from 1.0 to 2.0.

The term new retail basically means the combination of online plus offline. All e-commerce companies agree that offline is very important, especially offline traffic. Offline companies also believe that if there is no online support, there will be many challenges and ceilings for companies to move forward. A consensus was formed.

But in the development of the first wave of new retail or the combination of online and offline, a mainstream combination adopted by everyone is offline stores plus online home services. But there are actually many problems with home service:

First, it depends heavily on the traffic of first-tier cities and quasi-first-tier cities. The demand for cost-effectiveness in sinking market users is higher than the demand for convenience, so the home mode is a relatively front-line and quasi-front-line model.

Second, the cost of home service is higher.

Third, home service will have a diversion effect on the retail storefront, reducing cross-category purchase opportunities for users when they arrive at the store. Taking the community fresh convenience store as an example, the impact of traffic is very obvious, because the radius of the service of a community store is within 1.5 kilometers of the surrounding area. All users who originally belong to this area are his, and home service is equivalent to reducing user crossover. Opportunities for category purchases. Because most people will only focus on their initial needs when choosing home service, the diversion effect of home service may reduce store sales.

New retail 1.0 stage, offline retail anxiety existsThis kind of mentality, but community group buying can relieve this anxiety to a certain extent. Under this model, online and offline are a complementary relationship. One is the complementarity of categories. For example, the products operated by a convenience store are standard products, while the main business of Shihui Group is fresh. For offline The store brings incremental and revenue, but it will not affect the basic product of your offline products, and the home service is directly digging the existing basic product of the product; the second is the complementarity of user traffic, the community group purchase is based on This kind of self-lifting model exists, encouraging users to go to the store. In the process, 30% of users will buy some other products in the store, which not only brings new orders, but also new customer flow. That said, not only do I bring you dozens of new orders in a day. Therefore, this online and offline combination will be smoother and more complementary in terms of goods and traffic.

When we talked about new retail, we only talked about online plus offline. But I think the new retail is a good product plus online and offline. The previous new retail was too focused on the innovation of the business model, and forgot about the new retail, only the word new is equal to online plus offline, and the word retail Commodities are still religious. I think New Retail 2.0 is a good product plus online and offline. The outbreak has made the entire industry aware of the importance of good products. In the future, with the gradual development of community group buying, it will gradually develop and integrate into new retail in the community.

Activate traditional offline retail with data and products

There are 1 million communities in China. Each community is calculated based on 300 households. If we refer to the current sales data of Shihui Group and the average sales price, we will calculate it. With the expansion of channel layout and the development of consumer habits, the community group buying industry should be at least a huge market with a scale of more than 500 billion.

In fact, after the “Thousand Group Wars” experienced in 2019, the pattern of community group purchases has gradually become clear. There are only two or three real head companies. At present, the entire industry already has a strong “head effect”, but community purchase is different from other Internet e-commerce industries. Community purchase is unlikely to have a full Matthew effect because it is different from the traditional Internet industry. The better the experience, the more users, which will greatly increase the threshold of this industry. It will be more difficult for other companies that want to enter the industry or launch the same type of products, but the community group purchase is different. In the future, the community group purchase will be from 2-3 companies. Enterprises jointly promote the development direction of the industry.

Community group buying this industry may merge into this community new retail or new retail wave. By then, there will be some new changes in the market structure, and we will welcome friends from other industries.

In the future, we will mainly do two things:

One is to further promote the combination of online and offline. The combination of online and offline will be gradually developed from shallow to deep. We will also gradually promote more and more community retail stores to join the community group buying industry; at the same time, we will gradually cooperate with some online and offline companies to open up data, goods and supply chain levels. These connections can further deactivate the vitality of traditional offline retail, while greatly reducing costs. Promote the combination of community stores and group purchases to speed up new retail into the 2.0 era.

Second, create your own good products. Community group purchase business or new retail business is the ultimate goal of providing users with delicious and inexpensive products. After 1-2 years of extensive development, the entire community group buying industry will refocus on goods and services to create its own differentiated goods and excellent service experience that will satisfy customers.

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