"With the development of instant retail, especially Meituan has such a strong performance ability and foundation, it is a natural choice platform for fresh seafood business." They do better online connections", "only by meeting the needs of users in new scenarios can they grow at a high speed"...
Recently, at the "15th Global Own Brand Products Asia Exhibition and the 4th Retail Fresh Food Ingredients Exhibition" held in Nanjing International Expo Center, Liu Hao, head of Meituan's flash shopping food business, focused on "retail + technology— — The theme of Meituan Flash Shopping Helps Fresh Seafood 'Bounce' to Home", shared the experience of Meituan Flash Shopping in terms of business empowerment and consumer demand changes.
At the meeting, "Retail Circle" had a dialogue with Liu Hao, the person in charge of Meituan Flash Shopping's ingredients business, and learned more about the measures that Meituan Flash Shopping has taken to help merchants operate. "Retail Circle" believes that with the continuous expansion of the instant retail market in the future, Meituan's flash sales will become one of Meituan's most imaginative businesses.
1. Meituan’s flash sales in a trillion-dollar market
Meituan defines Meituan’s flash shopping business as an “instant retail platform where everything can be delivered within 30 minutes”, aiming to provide consumers with convenient purchase services covering all categories and all hours.
In July 2018, Meituan Flash Shopping was officially released as an independent brand. At the same time, Meituan established the Flash Shopping Division, clearly positioning itself as an instant retail platform. According to "Retail Circle", at present, there are more than 1 billion products (SKUs) online in Meituan's flash shopping every day, covering categories including drinks and snacks, fresh fruits and vegetables, flowers and green plants, pet mothers and babies, digital books, beauty day Chemicals, home appliances, groceries and many other categories.
In December 2022, the single-day peak of Meituan’s flash sales exceeded 11 million. According to the financial report data, there will be nearly 300,000 convenience stores and small supermarkets related to instant retail on the Meituan platform in 2022, which is more than twice the number in 2019. The sales volume of merchants has increased by more than 400% compared with 2019. 3 times. Not only has the coverage of supermarkets and convenience stores been expanded, but also significant progress has been made in terms of categories, such as the addition of categories such as digital home appliances, beauty cosmetics, and daily necessities.
In addition, according to iResearch data, among consumers in China's instant retail industry, users born in the 1985s and 1990s accounted for 64.6%. The current number of users of Meituan has reached nearly 690 million, mainly consumers aged 16-35, which basically coincide with the users of Meituan Flash Shopping. Coupled with the high penetration of takeaway, this group of people generally has the habit of online instant consumption, and their consumption demand has also extended from takeaway catering to takeaway shopping.
That is to say, Meituan flash shopping has had a natural traffic pool from the very beginning, and has a group of high-quality young users who are active and have stronger spending power. question. In terms of coverage, at present, based on the Meituan food delivery system, Meituan’s flash sales have covered 2,800 counties and cities across the country, and the merchants that have settled in are not only the leading chain stores, but also fresh food, seafood stores, and convenience stores. , flower shops, bookstores and other stores of various formats and sizes.
Based on this, "Retail Circle" believes that Meituan's flash sale is the bridgehead for Meituan to try physical e-commerce, and it is a key step based on Meituan's existing logistics and merchant resources. At present, compared with other real-time retail platforms on the market, such as Ele.me New Retail and JD Daojia, the biggest advantage of Meituan Flash Shopping is still its traffic and relying on Meituan’s strong delivery team.
2. From "emergency needs" to "daily needs"
"Retail Circle" noticed that from "home in a hurry" to "all-weather", from a single vertical category to all categories, user habits are gradually formed under consumption upgrades, and instant retail is moving from emergency to daily life.
This change can also be seen from the changes and the number of shopping categories that a user of Meituan Flash Shopping has spent on Meituan Flash Shopping for more than a year. According to user research, in January 2020, the user purchased a mobile phone data cable for the first time in the Meituan flash sale. After that, from fruit cutting, snack food, personal care, digital home appliances, to clothing, shoes and bags, household cleaning, etc., by 2021 In April, the user placed a total of 65 orders in flash sales and purchased 134 items. It is not difficult to see that in the Meituan flash sale, the needs of users are no longer limited to "emergency", but have changed into the daily needs of everything at home.
"Retail Circle" also learned that during the "New Year's Shopping Festival" during the Spring Festival this year, in addition to traditional products such as fresh fruits and vegetables, snacks, drinks, and flowers, Meituan's flash sales also continued to enrich the supply of digital, beauty makeup, and pet products. Taking 3C home appliances as an example, from January to the new year, the number of business operators increased by 140% year-on-year.
At the same time, in order to better meet consumers’ shopping needs for new year’s goods, Meituan’s flash shopping also launched the selection of “Gold Medal Stores”. A group of stores with good service experience and strong operating capabilities were selected for support, in order to bring consumers a better experience. As of the end of February, a total of 6,200 "gold medal stores" have been selected in five cities including Beijing, Chengdu, Nanjing, Changsha and Suzhou.
It is understood that the stores selected as "Gold Medal Good Stores" have an average operating time of nearly 16 hours, which can maximize the service time and allow consumers to buy goods anytime and anywhere. Obviously, the "qualitative change" of the retail industry brought about by Meituan's flash sales has not only deepened consumers' awareness of the New Year's Day on the platform, but also promoted the prosperity of the entire instant retail ecosystem, and created more long-term growth and multi-directional Win-win new business opportunities.
Looking back at the development stage of instant retailing, it is not difficult to find that the track itself is constantly "evolving": from initially solving the supply problem in "goods", to now satisfying more demand in "people". It can be said that as time goes by, instant retail in the future is bound to bring about a newer reconstruction of the "people and goods yard". The real-time retail platform represented by Meituan Flash Shopping is obviously already at the forefront in this regard.
3. Release the "mismatch between supply and demand" and help ecological partners
"Retail Circle" learned that in order to help retailers solve business problems in the digitalization process, in 2022, Meituan will release a digital middle-end SaaS system - Meituan Morning Glory System.
It is understood that Morning Glory can solve the three major online pain points of "difficulty in product selection, difficulty in building products, and difficulty in issuing orders" in one fell swoop, helping businesses improve quality and efficiency. At the same time, based on data insights and category characteristics, it can also provide differentiated and full-scenario product recommendations for merchants in different cities and formats, including core must-sell products, hot search products, festive outbreak products, and online celebrity products. In addition, through product sales analysis, merchants can also check the sales volume, transaction volume, and subsidies brought by new products in the store, helping merchants choose good products, manage good products, sell good prices, and serve consumers well.
At the meeting, Liu Hao also shared the specific case of Guoquan Shihui how flash shopping can help ecological partners grow their business. First of all, in terms of deepening user brand awareness, Meituan’s flash shopping linkage Guoquan Shihui deeply explored rich marketing methods in the instant home scene. The category marketing scenario helps Guoquan Shihui improve user brand awareness on the instant retail platform and achieve steady growth in online business.
Secondly, it is a year-round plan to create a venue for hot pot promotion during holidays. Meituan Flash Shopping has a large number of young user groups who have developed home consumption habits through the platform. By combining brand activities with festival scenes, covering the "week-month-quarter" annual timeline, it helps merchants build platform users' minds in an all-round way. For example, during major festivals that focus on reunion scenes, user demand will show explosive growth. Meituan Flash Shopping should build a themed marketing event venue to help Guoquan Shihui make full use of the explosive period of traffic on the site to achieve transaction growth.
Thirdly, it is to formulate explosive product strategies and strengthen category penetration. At the end of 2021, Guoquan Shihui's new product "Jiantou Brain Snowflake Fat Cow" will be released on Meituan. The fat cow product is selected as the main product, combined with the online marketing field, so that the weekly trading volume of Guoquan Shihui will exceed the brand At the peak, weekend orders reached 128,000 orders.
Finally, it is an ecological linkage to create a "hot pot +" marketing scene. As a category with obvious sceneization, hot pot ingredients have strong intersections with scenes such as pre-meal, after-meal, and accompanying food and drinks. Relying on the brand resources of the platform ecology, Meituan Flash Shopping promotes cross-category exploration and cooperation in innovative scenarios, such as joint promotion with catering merchants and milk tea merchants to provide more brand promotion for the event and source of user traffic channels.
Based on the above, "Retail Circle" believes that instant retail is growing into a trillion-dollar market that is recognized by everyone, and it will also bring new economic boost to physical stores such as offline supermarkets, convenience stores, and fresh ingredients, and reversely promote it. Business model and service upgrades. Just as Meituan Flash Shopping previously said: “Whether it’s an opportunity for an upturn in supply, a mismatch between supply and demand, or new consumption trends, they are all growth opportunities that are visible to the naked eye in the trillion-dollar market of instant retail. In the future, Meituan Flash Shopping hopes to cooperate with More brick-and-mortar retail partners, together to discover new increments of trillions of real-time retail."