The evolution and variation of group buying mode

Absrtact: The tide of group buying began with Groupon, and finally the local life service. When asked about the changes in Wang's view of group buying, he replied: People migrate to mobile internet faster than I thought, and now we have

Group buying began with Groupon, and finally the local life service. When asked about Wang's view of group buying and how it changed in the first time, he replied: "People migrate to the mobile internet faster than I expected, now we have more than 80% of the transaction is on the mobile phone, we are on the mobile Internet Platform client second only to Taobao, than the sky cat, greater than the east Beijing." ”

Editor's note If you want to draw a line between the Chinese Internet and the mobile Internet, group buying is on the threshold of change. In less than 5 years, group purchase on the completion of the thousands of free competition to three oligopoly of the relatively stable market pattern of fission polymerization process, the form also with the original daily a single evolution to today's local life service, capital power, the evolution of the model, start-up companies in the rapid development of the struggle and decision-making, staged a perfect drama.

Zhongshan Park, Shanghai, the most prosperous business, one of the most competitive shopping district. Downtown, there is a quiet entrepreneurial park, outside the house is a secluded tree-lined trails and comfortable open-air balcony, the public reviews are located. As a quiet environment, the company in the creation of a few years has always been a kind of old Shanghai people's leisure.

As long as the Yelp was not born before the arrival of Groupon, the public reviews founder and CEO Zhang has tried to move users to the online restaurant information, which is the first net experience in the offline restaurant. But group buying broke into the quiet state of the public comment.

2003, the public comments on the local life service began the process of entrepreneurship, began to point membership card and coupons, and then just expand to the north of a few major cities. If the company wants to do an activity or develop a product, because the product and the technology is few, therefore many functions all need the long queue time and waits, this lets some impatient and wants to toss up the career the staff often hard to believe the internet company incredibly is such slow rhythm.

Subject to the business model and development speed, has let many people in the industry sigh, the public comments on the initial account of a good position, but eventually missed the possibility of becoming a giant.

Opportunities and challenges come to this company. June 2010, when the major sites began to do group buying, whether it is a membership card or coupons, are less than group buy this model discount, prepayment mode can also let group buying company has a good cash flow. Zhang Urgent, he saw the group purchase mode on the public comment on the impact of the original business, personally led on the front line, whether it is the product development speed, or the staff's work scheduling, the pace is significantly faster.

It was in that year June, Renren's sticky rice network officially on line. In that group purchase or a single day, the first single glutinous rice net sold out, 150,000 sets of 300,000 movie tickets, one day sold 6 million of the water, became the most sales.

One months before the line, glutinous Rice's website has been made, but it is difficult to find the first single. In early group buying, there were few tickets for the movie, glutinous Rice net founder Shenboyang found Beijing five pine just opened the Yao Lai International Film City, with the film City boss repeated communication, talk about a very low discount-40 dollars = Two movie tickets + a popcorn + two cups of cola + a Haagen-Dazs ball. Because the location of the cinema is very partial, Shenboyang estimated that the first single estimate can sell 10,000 copies, the result sold to 150,000.

One day, glutinous Rice became China's largest group of group buying sites, registered users to break 200,000. Hit's glutinous rice won the talk of a very low discount, and with the help of Renren's home guide. At that time the group purchase some similar to the concept of snapping, every night after 12 o'clock orders offline. The user began to keep breaking into the phone and asked, what movie tickets do you sell tomorrow--glutinous rice was once regarded as a company selling discounted movie tickets.

By July, almost all movie tickets had become double ticket and popcorn, which meant that the so-called innovations were easily replicated in the group buying industry. The key is to see who has a good rhythm to the merchant to dig away, the key factor is the flow of the site group purchase, each single profit and the Merchant's knot system.

How to set up and business with the total win, Shenboyang often share a case is, glutinous rice has talked about the 196 Yuan Indus double package, the original price of 280 yuan, is ready to go online when the Shenboyang veto. Indus is Beijing's middle and high-end restaurant, per capita consumption is about 250 yuan, if use this package to attract people, it is difficult to continue to introduce customers. After the adjustment, the Indus put their own relatively good dishes out, with the same discount made a 258 yuan package, although a little more expensive, but can let the business maintain Word-of-mouth, soon 3,000 sold out.

Early on, sales and business to talk about ultra-low discounts of the starting point is to buy is a marketing, the lower the discount, the more can attract more guests to experience, into a loyal user. 24 Coupons Early sales, he had a list with jewelry manufacturers, users only need to spend 1 yuan to enjoy the jewelry store 30 percent discount. He thought he would sell tens of thousands of, but only 5,000. "Later I thought it was wrong, I brought low-cost guests to the jewelry store, but for me it was just 5000 dollars of water," he said. "The sales recall," then the reflective plan should spend 30 dollars to buy 100 yuan voucher, so that the account can generate a lot of water and turnover. ”

For sales, a lot of water and turnover often means better commission. Only the difference between the business strategy, each single group purchase site or sales themselves bring the value of a different.

In a long period of time, the public comments are in the original advertising in accordance with the thinking of the commercial drainage, because the original promotion business to earn advertising fees does not involve the transaction system and settlement, only need to put the display on the page, so the background system is not so much attention; second, the advertising model does not accept the money of consumers, Comment Early did not establish customer service team, later found that, as long as consumers in the platform consumption, involving transactions, even the small list will be to seek solutions, and then gradually set up a customer service team; These two directions for the sale of the requirements and management is not the same, the promotion of management is the Director is the service sales , and group purchase needs to be able to suppress the city's regional managers.

Another lesson of advertising thinking to the public is the slow speed of the station. Today, the popularization of the mass reviews has only done 33 cities. "Promoting the cities that can be done is far less than the cities that can buy them," Zhang said of the city's expansion strategy on "business value". "For example, the promotion of coupon business, the keyword is based on the public comments on the existing traffic to sell the promotion, the limit is the number of users in the local group purchase site." For smaller cities, many users are already familiar with the cities they have lived in for years, there is no demand for businesses, but group buying is the concept of discounts, so these urban users have to find cheap demand, cheap this point in almost every city has a demand, so group buying in many small cities become the promotion of business enlightenment.

In the initial creation of domestic group buying site, are imitating Groupon, the implementation of a single day form. But Groupon is a solo show to occupy the market, it is easy to get 40% gross profit margin, while the domestic group buying industry average margin in 5%~10%. In order to rapidly expand the scale and increase sales, full network, litters group, such as group purchase site first launched more than a single day and a single day, group buying business model began to change, snapping up the concept began to weaken.

Market environment thriving Let group buying market from a single transition to one day more than single and a single days, if back to that period of capital Winter, group buy derived a variety of new model is in the capital under the cold winter survival of the operation.

is 24 coupons downhill, the media came out with a message, full network model innovation, become a profitable group buying site. In fact, a large number of domestic group buying sites are tightening the big adjustment for financing, 10 million of the water scale and 1 billion of the water scale is completely different, full profit is to reduce the pace of development by small scale.

The big adjustment of the full net is after the second round of financing failure. At that time, Ma Zheng from the United States to talk about financing back home, found that the situation is not good, he and full network founder and CEO Feng began to promote rice Inamori recommended "amoeba management."

Ma Zheng has made the most dangerous choice in his career-to resign as a Kleiner investor and go to full network as COO to help the company through. The average employee could not understand his affiliation, a full executive said: "The full net slowed down obviously because of the Ma Zheng, when the other executives of the company often deliberately avoided him." ”

Ma Zheng joined the full network and did two big things. First, the establishment of a full network of IT systems, improve efficiency; the second is to increase the vertical category, such as peripheral travel and movies. In the background after the establishment of the system, Ma Zheng found that the mother and child group purchase users particularly many, found that the mother and child users will go to some of the surrounding attractions, and such attractions need to have a car to go, the full user group is just this group of people, so the conversion rate is good.

The establishment of this system is inextricably linked to his earliest study in the United States, as Groupon is a technology-driven company that uses data analysis to expand its businesses. The full network also developed a suitable merchant marketing system based on this, such as the accurate use of e-mail recommended ads to Watson users. At the same time, the full also began to cooperate with Wanda, online to do a "million Shunda", will be on-line group buy users into the Jinan Wanda shopping malls, full charge of Wanda advertising fees and sales commissions. This mode in Jinan harvest very good results began to promote in the country.

In these attempts, the business model of group buying has been changing, beginning to move toward local marketing of O2O drainage.

But the most difficult adjustment is related to local substation personnel adjustment, "amoeba management" used to buy, means that the city managers have become their own contracted accounting. However, this method of management is full of stages, the loss of the city first stripped away, but did not peel off the profit of the city. In fact, it was also the way to reduce the number of people from 1000 to more than 500. Ma Zheng said: "We actually have not so much money to bear this loss, if you keep them loss of these cities, we die together, if you break these things, the rest of the people can survive." ”

Fortunately, in the process, the full network did not appear a labor dispute, and precision marketing IT system is also the establishment of the future by Suning acquisition buried foreshadowing. Now, looking back at this history, it is the darkest hour of the horse's career. Now recalls, he to "business value" sigh: "At that time feel nothing, now think still some fear, if you choose again, do not dare to do so." ”

Feng also lucky fortunately brake in time did not appear big problem. This is the right thing to do, starting with the cold winter of capital markets and the adjustment of financing failures, until now. But a former market executive said: "The full network should not be a strategic contraction, the use of all means of financing is the most important." You see now the handle, the litters regiment, at that time maintained the scale expansion, now at least still live well. ”

The adjustment of the full net is a miniature of the collective change vane of group buying. In an interview with business value, Xu Maodong, founder of Litters Group, said: "Group sales and profits are less than 10%." ”

In the group buying site also put a lot of offline team called Sales, the litters group has called this group of people as account manager. As early as two years ago, the litters Regiment began to adjust the business, will buy mode into the "litters Mall" mode, and the focus shifted to local life services, such as the church business how to use the Litters Regiment system, to help merchants to direct sales, the use of group buying mode to do the normal marketing.

Group Purchase mode originated from the PC era of products, but now the litters group has 70% of the transaction in the mobile end, the United States Regiment has 80% of the transaction in the mobile end, Xu Maodong the Litters Regiment to do things divided into three stages:

The first stage is the merchants to use group buying to advertise, the development of new users, this stage is net stage;

The second stage is the life service business to open the shop online, this stage is actually the relocation stage of life service business, the life service moved to the Internet;

The third stage is to upgrade service capabilities in extensive, such as businesses selling a set of 2000 copies a meal at a time, but it is often difficult to know which are repeat customers and which are new users. The sale is for the development of new customers, but more often to the old customers to sell a large discount of goods, from this point of view the profit of the business has become lower.

The third stage is the litters group wants to advance the direction, launches lets the merchant in the Litters Group page opens the shop, own pricing new model. The litters group is providing mobile store apps to life services businesses. For example, Jiangnan in the litters on the group of shops, by the litters Regiment to provide the entire system, Qiao Jiangnan own direct sales and the pricing of real-time adjustment, Qiao Jiangnan 5 seats left at noon, only to sell the remaining seats, to refine the operation, group buying site will no longer participate in pricing.

Whether such business models are able to pass is stimulating intense discussion within the litters group. Xu Maodong is a very slow person to make decisions, often spend two or three months a person thinking, and then think that there is a 90% certainty, will get the executive discussion, but at each seminar basically no one agreed with his views.

"It's not fair that you spend two or three months thinking about it and having someone give you a 5-minute 10-minute discussion." Usually the first meeting I was very few to speak, because I know all is against, after the first objection is over, the second jumped out 10% people began to support me, the third time more and more, more and more, basically this. "Xu Maodong said.

Xu Maodong want to emulate the day cat as a business to provide direct marketing platform: for example, in the merchant end will soon give up pricing, commodity pricing power to the merchant, completely back to the platform model. Although the litters group fits the overall market direction, but the specific model has sparked an internal heated discussion, has not been a lot of people in the industry optimistic. Or, Xu Maodong with supermarket experience is not suitable for a technology-led ecosystem company.

At this time, has 10 years of business accumulation of the public comments has for the first time the offline income into online advertising evaluation system, that is, the use of data to quantify the local life services businesses online advertising on the impact of online store revenue. In 10 research cities nationwide, the public comments on the average can bring 3 table food and beverage consumers, 7 beauty consumers and two groups of leisure and entertainment consumers per 10次千.

This period of time is the orderly development stage of the United States, but also walk in the edge of group purchase innovation to survive the road. Group buying has begun to split into local life services, and families are beginning to compete in different latitudes and horizontal expansions. The future is based on the electronic business model to win, or similar to Taobao cat "platform + advertising" mode to win, the market is showing differential development.

According to the Analysys survey report, the first half of 2014 group buying market food and beverage sales share, the United States and the network accounted for 53%, the mass comment Group, the Baidu glutinous rice accounted for 21% and 15%, other group purchase site accounted for 11%, in the hotel, the United States and the market share accounted for more than 75% In other words, in the group buying field, the United States and the network has achieved absolute advantage, and the public reviews are also through a series of layout to strengthen their platform model.

At the Baidu World Congress, a data show, the new spicy road fish hot pot Group purchase revenue accounted for the total revenue ratio of more than 10%, and the shop to buy people accounted for 48%. This shows that the nature of group buying is changing, for consumers, consumers use group buying began to become the search is to use, but is no longer the concept of snapping up, for the store, buy La Nieu rate is decreasing.

Zhang said that the catering industry net profit of 10%, which is equivalent to 90 percent of the original price, if a merchant for a long period of 80 percent, then the equivalent of a penny can not be earned. "In theory, most businesses should not buy for a long time, now because of a variety of factors cause some businesses are constantly, in fact, there is a lot of damage." ”

More people believe that the group buying model is not a long-term model. Xu Maodong This litters after the development of the group: "We will continue to do, we will be limited to the use of group buying to help businesses advertise, businesses need to develop new users, rather than do the normal sales, litters against the mode of group buying to do the normal sales of businesses." ”

Qiao Jiangnan Zhao Xigang said he hoped group buying accounted for the overall proportion of sales 10%~20%, and the most wanted to develop the function is a reservation, because the restaurant can have customer phone and location information. Now in the 22 cities of South Beauty, there are more than 800 kinds of preferential ways to attract new guests, all kinds of marketing methods can bring passenger flow will be considered. The most tired link at the cashier, need to quickly find these concessions, which increasingly require catering enterprises to establish their own CRM system; But as a restaurant, no amount of concessions are not as good as taste to impress the user, the restaurant is also in line with the 28 law, only 20% of the food is the most moving users, can bring income growth, but do not know What the dishes are, so more need to collect feedback from users; If the signature dish is a duck, the purchase cost of Jiangnan will be higher than the whole Poly Tak, how to do supply chain optimization. These are the things that the public reviews are doing.

There is no denying that the group purchase is offline consumers and merchants of the Enlightenment, there is no purchase of the current local life services can not talk about. In the group buying site just the initiation stage, take the purchase coupons to see the film, often businesses also need to use hand transcription number and then with the Group purchase site verification, and no own background and IT systems. Buy the biggest contribution is to let consumers popular science network consumption and mobile phone payment is how to complete, the merchant also began to build its own IT system gradually.

Recently, the public comments on the continuous investment in Ishikawa technology, Shanglong, such as three ERP companies, hope to help food and beverage enterprises information Internet, and through large data to guide business management and precision marketing. The catering market ERP system is very decentralized, and the public comments hope to be able to use this will be as many as possible to open the ERP system to get through to this perfect online booking, ordering, buy, takeaway and other user experience.

Public comments in the time to do group buying the biggest mistake is to advertising mode as the main promotion platform and the main trading model of the purchase platform of the left and right mutual bo. And now, even if the client on the comments looks smaller from the outside, there has been a dramatic change in the interior.

To solve the sales line between the two sides of the method is to be the original product division of the business unit scattered to various divisions. Previously, the public comments are divided into Product Department, sales department, marketing department, each department's activities need to go to other departments to arrange the period; from the end of last year, Zhang began to implement the Division system, the original sales and technical team to various divisions, and identified 6 business lines, the main business including large group purchase, local promotion, marriage, Restaurant online booking, hotel reviews and take-out. After a big change in management structure, sales of both advertising and group buying rose rapidly.

In the field of selling, the public comments on the share of the hungry Mody, point me bar and line Line 0, the main idea is the platform model, the platform will open the interface to the use of these take-away sites, to enlarge the whole takeaway ecology; while the restaurant online booking is a public comment on self.

Hotel reviews, marriage, etc. made open platform mode, Access Ctrip, Art dragon, and foreign booking, Expedia, such as OTA platform, equivalent to these online tourism flow promotion platform; Because of the high unit price of the marriage, the decision chain is long, so comments on the page to provide a business platform, Thus charging advertising fees.

It can be said that with advertising thinking to do group buying has been imprisoned in a period of time the development of public reviews, and in the major group purchase site transformation, because the original accumulation of a large number of merchant resources, data and systems, achievements in the next step of the public comment.

In this context, the United States Regiment has also multiplied the cat's eye film, the United States and the group's three flagship hotel business. As of August 2014, the United States film sales occupy the national film total box-office nearly 20%, every 5 movie tickets sold in one from the cat's eye film, has become the largest online ticketing platform. Recently, the United States Regiment also with "elated" cooperation pre-sale, began to deeply intervene in the field of film distribution. In the hotel aspect, the American Regiment market share occupies the absolute superiority in 75%, goes to where inside already set off "the Anti-American War".

It is not difficult to find that the United States because the absolute advantage in the field of group buying began to expand horizontally, and the public comments in addition to group buying, is trying to establish a diversified mode of revenue through the open platform model.

Group 800 founder Hu Chen Analysis: "The United States and the attack of the story is a top-down process, once the United States team can obtain the consumer and obtain the brand recognition on the mobile end, it is possible to launch a more localized service, such as takeout, reservation and so on. From the initial positioning of the local life service in the public comments also continue to locate local life services, and intends to promote the business from top to bottom, from the quality of the city to go out. ”

Wang and Zhang, founder and CEO of the group, like to compare today's local life services to early Taobao.

"The entity of the electrical business basically began in 1999, until 2003 Taobao and the development of the back, and the service industry is basically the first year of the 2010, so in the early years must be rich to win." Wang told business value: "Taobao is the biggest success is when you have a bunch of opportunities in front of you, you should do something first." ”

If the group has formed a comment on business closed-loop trading to become the electric business model, and through the promotion and open platform to earn advertising fees, which is quite like Taobao that year, not only to collect the platform cost of the electric business model, but also rely on promotion to earn advertising costs. Today, group purchase and promotion in the public comments on the income of each half. The final development situation, Zhang analogy Taobao: "You said Taobao is to earn transaction fees or advertising fees, ultimately this is a comprehensive model." ”

Wang that the essence of group buying is similar to retail, which requires low cost and high efficiency. And his ambition is the whole O2O market: "The last win is the platform to win, the United States Regiment is to become a beer and skittles of the electric business platform." Like the early days of Taobao, it is a lot of things, everything has, so he is not any small category, in fact, the entire Taobao platform to do after, Taobao inside this breakdown category is to be left outside a separate special to do this category of vertical Web site. ”

Recently, in the three or four-line city frequently have businesses called the U.S. mission to sign the "exclusive agreement", businesses and the United States Group can no longer cooperate with other group buying site. The official interpretation of the United States network is the consumer first, merchants second, when the merchant access to a lot of group buying websites, passenger traffic over the reception capacity, and can not provide a good customer service, in order to control the quality of service, must be limited. Public comments on this view is that more attention to business and consumer balance.

This is not so much a monopoly on the "exclusive and exclusive" war, rather than a local life services to the next giant battle. The local life is a trillion-level big market. In any way, the player's goal is the same, and the next giant is about to be born.

Wang believes that the Internet industry will eventually form a 721 pattern: the first occupies 70% of the market share, the second accounted for 20%, the rest of all the remaining 10% of the partition. But the public comments that, from the merchant's point of view, they do not want the United States to monopolize the market, businessmen will fight, so the final market pattern is likely to be 6:4.

In addition to the internal Baidu is the layout of glutinous Rice group purchase, Baidu Takeout, Baidu is also launching direct number to attract businesses under the line, and micro-letter is vigorously promote the public account link online under the line; Alipay dug to micro-letter founder Zhangxiaolong under one of three chief directors, and open Interface layout offline business.

When asked about Wang's view of group buying and how it changed in the first time, he replied: "People migrate to the mobile internet faster than I expected, now we have more than 80% of the transaction is on the mobile phone, we are on the mobile Internet Platform client second only to Taobao, than the sky cat, greater than the east Beijing." ”

Mobile Internet is the group buying entrepreneurs to fight the giant moat, there will be a king battle. Mantis, Oriole.