Meituan'S "Boundless" Expansion: Marching Into Beauty And Pet Industry And Grabbing For Food E-Commerce Giants?

It can be predicted that the future retail industry is far from a foregone conclusion. Whether it is e-commerce, o2o platform or vertical platform, it will face more fierce competition.

Wang Xingzeng, who once publicly praised the game of finite and infinite, said that limited games are played within boundaries, while infinite games are at and boundaries, that is, playing with "rules". Exploration can change the boundary itself. At present, "boundless" meituan is vigorously expanding its territory beyond catering.

"Beauty is a mature market with great potential. At present, the overall market volume is close to 500 billion. Driven by the double flywheels of consumer population and per capita beauty consumption amount, the compound growth rate remains at about 10%. Therefore, we are very optimistic about the market volume and market growth rate. In particular, offline channels have huge growth opportunities, and digital means to serve the development of offline brand Direct stores and channel stores can bring new growth space for the beauty industry. " On September 25, the head of meituan's beauty business came to Chenyan to reveal to the 21st century economic reporter that at the end of last year, meituan determined the development strategy of beauty business and separated it from beauty business to focus on building.

At the same time, meituan launched digital solutions for the new offline formats of beauty cosmetics, including six services, including offline brand certification system, marketing services, distribution services, evaluation content, live broadcast, store exploration evaluation, etc. Generally speaking, this scheme of intra city distribution is similar to the new retail concept created by Alibaba.

Not only that, in August this year, meituan also participated in the Asian pet show for the first time, and put forward the concept of "pet supplies can be delivered to home in 30 minutes at the earliest". This means that, whether meituan or hungry, the takeout platform is no longer limited to catering delivery, but is committed to developing into a local life service platform of "giving everything away". Pets and beauty make-up are the pioneers in the subdivision field.

It can be predicted that the future retail industry is far from a foregone conclusion. Whether it is e-commerce, o2o platform or vertical platform, it will face more fierce competition.

Break the new game

According to the public data, the scale of China's beauty consumers may reach 400 million in 2025, and the per capita amount of beauty consumption will reach 1500 yuan / year in 2019. Driven by the twin wheels of consumer population and per capita consumption power, the beauty industry has great growth potential in the next three years, and it is predicted that the industry scale will exceed 600 billion yuan in 2023. In addition, consumer research shows that 86% of the new generation of post-90s consumers purchase cosmetics offline, and the consumption amount of offline cosmetics is about half of the total.

"Offline stores and counters are still important channels for beauty brands to win customers, accounting for more than half of the market scale. For mature brands, the cost of online promotion is continuously increasing, and the operating cost of online and offline channels is gradually approaching; for emerging brands, opening up offline channels and trying a new format of "service + retail" is a way to quickly open up the market. " Chen said.

It is worth noting that meituan beauty is not an e-commerce sales platform in the traditional sense. The starting point is still the local life service, and the first step to break the situation is to pull new products. Official data show that among the 460 million users of meituan platform, the core group is the post-90s, accounting for more than 80% and the post-95's account for more than 40%. 67% of the total number of users, and the number of users in the urban group is less than 30.67%.

Domestic products and affordable brands may be the focus of meituan's breakthrough. On the other hand, tmall platform has become the standard configuration of medium and high-end beauty and skin care products, and tmall global has become the preferred platform for large groups to incubate new brands of beauty makeup. In addition, Taobao, xiaohongshu, Jingdong and other e-commerce platforms have become one of the important ways for consumers to buy cosmetics. It's not clear how much cake meituan can get from it.

Li Lixun, founder of xintianweng, a local retail service provider, revealed in an interview with the 21st century economic report that the customer price of beauty products is several times higher than that of catering takeout, and the corresponding platform gains higher profits, which is also the reason why the local life service platform promotes beauty. "Brands are willing to try all kinds of new ways to get new traffic. After all, e-commerce channels may need higher costs to achieve growth now. "

At present, albatross, which is less than a year old, has reached a deep cooperation relationship with hungry Mo, meituan takeout and Jingdong Jiajia. It is committed to improving the real-time e-commerce infrastructure and creating a landing operation scheme for the transformation of traditional e-commerce to instant e-commerce. It is understood that the Commission proportion of meituan beauty makeup is about 5%, which is far lower than that of catering delivery.

On Subdivision

It is also an important way for customers to get a breakthrough in the online and offline service of Meichen stores. "Generally speaking, 40% of our brand sales are obtained through offline stores. It also needs to be grafted to offline channels through new media and financial media marketing. " The person in charge of the beauty brand sn.suki told the 21st century economic report that the opportunity for the brand to cooperate with the local life platform lies in the hope of improving the increment through service, which is the mode of front store and backyard.

Whether you are hungry or meituan, both hope to achieve a marketing closed-loop that can lead to more customers for the store through secondary marketing. Just recently, following HEMA Xiansheng's access to Nemo's distribution service, tmall supermarket will also officially access the "one hour delivery" and "half day delivery" services, covering more than 20000 goods. In the future, the distribution categories of both sides will cover 3C department stores, beauty clothes and other goods.

It is worth noting that the pet ecological platform, Borge pet, has recently officially submitted a prospectus in the United States and plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange. The future of pet e-commerce has also become clear. Frost & Sullivan predicts that the number of pets in China has increased from 189.6 million in 2014 to 302.1 million in 2019. It is estimated that by 2024, the number will further increase to 445.5 million, and the market size of pet industry will reach 449.5 billion yuan.

Coincidentally, meituan and hungry Mo have also targeted this market. According to the "2020 pet takeout report" released by hungry Mo, in the past year, the emerging consumer market of pet takeout has been heating up rapidly. The order of pet takeout has increased by 135%, and the price of pet takeout orders per customer is as high as 125 yuan, which is far higher than that of catering delivery. Meituan also disclosed the relevant data of pet products purchased by the takeaway platform: in the first half of 2020, the total sales amount of pet products flash purchased by meituan increased by 3.5 times compared with the same period of last year.

"Whether the number of products ordered or the number of pets that have been ordered is different, whether it is the distribution of products or the number of pets, it is a fact that the distribution of these products is different from that of consumers." Zeng Wei, head of meituan's flash shopping platform, once told reporters of the 21st century economic report that the penetration rate of the entire pet economy in the e-commerce platform has reached 42.9%, and online purchase of pet products has become one of the mainstream consumption patterns. He defined meituan flash buying as lbs e-commerce platform, becoming a new digital infrastructure for local life.

For the thirsty brands and businesses, a more attempt is also a choice. In any case, the platform is the biggest winner. After the demographic dividend of catering delivery meets the ceiling, "everything can be sent" has become an important strategy for the platform to expand its revenue. Li Lixun revealed that the company's current cooperation categories are snacks, daily chemical, beauty, drinks, cold drinks, pet supplies, etc. Although the demand of users to buy beauty products exists, it has not brought much increment, and the user's mind and consumption habits still need to be cultivated. "However, offline instant retail is undoubtedly a huge opportunity and blue ocean. For giants, the growth of Gmv is still very important."