Our reporter Li Li reported from Shanghai
Before the “Double 11” in 2022, Suning Tesco and Meituan officially joined hands.
A few days ago, Suning.com and Meituan reached a strategic cooperation. Over 600 stores across the country have settled in Meituan, covering a total of 175 cities. Since October 21, users can log in to the “Meituan” or “Meituan Takeaway” APP and search for “Suning.com” to place orders for mobile phones, computers, and household appliances, which will be delivered in as fast as 30 minutes.
“The first batch of 629 stores in 175 cities is planned to enter more than 1,000 stores in 2023.” Suning Tesco confirmed to a reporter from China Business News that it will continue to work with Meituan to promote instant retail, air conditioners, refrigerators and other major appliances. Instant delivery will be the next focus.
For Meituan, Suning.com is obviously an important part of its real-time retail. The relevant person in charge of Meituan’s flash sale responded that Suning.com, as the head of the offline digital home appliance chain store, has a rich offline supply of digital home appliance products. The supply of important local entities in Meituan’s flash sale has enriched and expanded the supply of digital home appliances.
This scene seems a bit similar to when Suning Tesco joined hands with Alibaba, but the protagonist and situation of the story have undergone earth-shaking changes.
Get the cooperation you need
From deep losses to wearing a hat to “ST Tesco”, Suning Tesco has experienced a year of ups and downs. However, the offline chain stores deployed in the early years still gave Suning Tesco the “capital” to continue playing. According to the financial report data, as of June 30, 2022, Suning.com had 1,589 professional 3C home and living stores under Suning.com, and 9,749 Suning.com retail cloud franchise stores in the county-level sinking market, still covering core business districts, community business districts, Multiple offline consumption scenarios such as supermarkets, some shopping centers, and sinking markets.
“Online ordering, nearby stores delivery, 30-minute fast delivery”, Suning Tesco clearly wants to create a new shopping experience through Meituan. Suning.com told reporters that it is not that the industry has not tried to move mobile phones and digital products to the local life platform in the early stage, but thanks to its supply chain, standardized service system, as well as home appliances and 3C digital categories, Suning.com is owned by Suning.com. Advantages, such a large-scale deployment, Suning.com is the first. After the previous deployment, nearly 3,000 SKUs have been put on Meituan.
According to the reporter’s understanding, Suning.com has already made similar attempts before cooperating with Meituan. In July this year, the Suning.com APP quietly launched the new service “Suning Suda”. Consumers who have Suning.com stores within 3 to 5 kilometers can choose the flash delivery service. There is no delivery fee, and the average delivery time of mobile phone 3C is less than 1 hour. However, compared with the attempt of “Suning Suda”, cooperation with Meituan is obviously more efficient and can effectively control costs.
The relevant person in charge of the digital home appliance category of Meituan flash sale revealed to reporters that after the official announcement of the cooperation with Suning.com, some digital home appliance brands and chain stores in offline stores were very concerned, and they came to learn about the relevant situation and discuss follow-up cooperation opportunities.
“The entry of Suning.com can quickly enrich the supply of digital home appliances for Meituan Flash, and it can also continue to attract the attention of more digital 3C leading brands, accelerating the supply coverage of Meituan Flash’s digital home appliances.” The person in charge thinks.
However, the two sides did not disclose more details of the cooperation. The announcement of Meituan’s flash sale shows that the surrounding stores are pushed according to the user’s address, and the activities of the corresponding stores are displayed, and the price is subject to the actual settlement.
The reporter entered the Meituan APP and searched for “Suning.com”. The results showed that the delivery fee from 49 yuan is zero. However, the number of online orders is not large. The largest number of orders placed in the “nearby Suning Tesco stores” is 174 orders per month, and the order volume of most stores is still in the single digits for the time being. The categories of online sales are divided into mobile phones, mobile phone accessories, household appliances, computer office, etc. The richness of goods still needs to be expanded.
Instant retail “growth logic”
Compared with taking what they need, under the situation of peak traffic and fragmentation, instant retail is a necessary step for companies such as Meituan.
The main feature of instant retail is “online order, offline delivery within 30 minutes”, and its supply is highly dependent on local stores. Through Suning.com, Meituan continues to promote instant retail at a lower cost, which can strengthen the user’s mind of “buying appliances like a takeaway”. “Mobile phones, computers and household appliances are all high-priced products, with an average price of more than 3,000 yuan. These products complement and consolidate the 3C segment of Meituan’s home appliances, and more significantly increase the unit price of Meituan’s platform.” Accepted. The industry insiders interviewed pointed out.
It is worth noting that Meituan’s own positioning in the capital market is also constantly evolving. Meituan went public in 2018 and is positioned as “China’s largest food delivery platform”. But with takeaway as the traffic portal, Meituan’s capital story continues to move forward. From hotel and travel services, Meituan grocery shopping to medical care, Meituan has gradually grown into a super platform for local life services.
In 2022, Meituan will release its Q2 financial report, and the status of instant retail in Meituan will be further enhanced. Meituan flash sale, which represents instant retail, is also divided from new business to core local business, standing together with takeaway, in-store and hotel and tourism.
According to the financial report, the average daily order volume of Meituan flash sales reached 4.3 million, and the number of users and transaction frequency increased significantly. “In the past few years, Meituan Flash has established its own core competitiveness. In terms of distribution, Meituan has reused Meituan’s nationwide instant distribution network, accumulated the industry’s largest local merchant base, and has the most diverse local supply.” Meituan CEO Wang Xing said in a subsequent earnings call.
Zhang Lin, deputy dean of the Meituan Research Institute, believes that the future of instant retail and physical retail will be a symbiotic relationship. “Local physical retail is the basic supply of instant retail. The key to the further development of instant retail is the richness of local supply. The efficiency, service capability and cost of local supply are important growth points for instant retail in the future.” Zhang Lin told reporters that the requirements for consumption certainty and timeliness are constantly improving, and “takeaway as express delivery” has also become a lot of consumers. form of spontaneous shopping.
In Zhang Lin’s view, the development logic of instant retail can be summed up as “the prosperity of local physical retail, the growth of new formats such as instant retail, which in turn feeds back the growth of local physical retail and further promotes the revitalization of the local real economy”.
Meituan instant retail is creating the concept of “everything can be taken out”, in addition to food, medicine and beauty, even more categories of home appliances will be included in it.
However, on the battlefield of instant retail, another player, JD.com, has a fundamentally different operation logic from Meituan. Meituan is the entry point for takeaway, and the way to operate traffic is to do instant retailing. Try the takeaway brother as the pioneer to open the door to instant retail. JD.com operates in a retail mode. Dada Group, a subsidiary of JD.com, went public with the aura of the first share of “instant retail”, and it has basically completed the integration with JD.com. “JD.com does instant delivery. 3C home appliances are a natural advantage. In addition, Dada has accumulated many years in the field of supermarkets, and the battlefield is far from a winner.” A person close to JD.com said.
Depending on the operational logic, the path of development, the customers won and the final result will be very different. However, retail is a very complex and professional system, and it cannot be won by a quick attack on the Internet. The partnership between Meituan and Suning.com has opened up a new version of instant retailing. The former will definitely need to go back and make up for retail lessons after expanding its territory. Whether Suning.com can take advantage of Meituan’s express train to find new opportunities remains to be verified. .