TikTok ends up opening a supermarket, and another super app that Musk envies is coming?
Musk, who acquired Twitter in twists and turns, has never concealed his appreciation for WeChat:
"I think WeChat is a good sample, in China you can almost live in WeChat."
When the era of making the cake bigger is over, giants want to make super applications in the stock market.
Douyin is no exception. It tried out food delivery before, and recently opened a supermarket, making its “side business” flourish.
Douyin opens a supermarket, not many features
Recently, "Douyin Supermarket" officially opened its doors across the country to welcome customers.
Its location is a bit hidden. You can enter "Douyin Supermarket" in the Douyin search bar or Douyin Mall to jump to the entrance of the supermarket.
Enter the simple green tone page, and the products are divided into 9 categories, including milk and drink preparation, paper laundry, wine health care, household cleaning, personal care and beauty, snacks and sweets, mother and baby pets, grain and oil instant food, electrical appliances, etc. Same as other online supermarkets.
The column of "Explosive Spikes" is updated every day, and uses words such as "real subsidized price to buy with peace of mind" and "lowest price within 30 days" to remind users to collect cash in time with a loudspeaker.
Click into the specific product description, and you can find two outstanding features of Douyin Supermarket. The first is product quality, emphasizing "official direct delivery, authentic product guarantee". Compared with the brand's own store on Douyin, the self-operated platform is easier for users to trust.
The second is the logistics speed, marked with next day delivery, next day delivery, same day delivery or next day delivery. If the coordinates are in Guangzhou, the next day delivery is the majority.
In pilot cities such as Guangzhou, in addition to the homepage, there is also a special "hourly delivery" page, where local retail stores sell fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry, flowers and other categories, and the delivery is as fast as 1 hour.
Although it’s a newcomer, Douyin Supermarket is very capable of “making trouble”—from January 9th to 28th, it launched the “New Year’s Day” campaign, catching up with the upsurge of buying new year’s goods, and when it was approaching the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, it went online again "Lantern Festival of Goods".
"Douyin Supermarket" belongs to Douyin E-commerce, and it is not a new business. It launched investment promotion in July last year, and piloted it in four cities in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Huizhou and Dongguan last October.
Online supermarkets are a sea of red, and community group buying is common. In the face of new and old competitors such as Tmall, JD.com, and Meituan, is there anything special about Douyin Supermarket?
Not yet.
Douyin Supermarket has complete categories, but the total number of products is not rich enough. "New Entropy" pointed out that the current number of SKUs in Douyin Supermarket is basically equivalent to that of a small and medium-sized supermarket, and the shortage of some categories is serious.
In terms of delivery speed, some products in Douyin cities can be delivered the next day, and some cities can be delivered within hours, which is not an advantage.
In contrast, Jingdong Supermarket has hourly shopping, Tmall Supermarket has half-day delivery, Meituan chooses to pick up the next day, and Meituan grocery shopping can be delivered in half an hour at the fastest. Meituan's "supermarket convenience" is like takeaway. Not to mention that Douyin does not have its own logistics, which is mainly outsourced to SF Express.
However, Douyin’s user base should not be underestimated.
▲ Picture from: Simple Psychology
As of April 2022, Douyin has 680 million monthly active users . Supermarkets have collected a large number of household fast-moving consumer goods with low unit prices and high repurchase rates, which correspond to the shopping needs of the "greatest common divisor".
But on the other hand, the algorithm that Douyin is proud of has no in-depth connection with Douyin Supermarket for the time being.
Douyin Supermarket is not passive feeding like “guess you like it” like watching short videos, but requires users to search for “Douyin Supermarket” and actively complete the purchase behavior, so it is almost independent of Douyin’s information flow.
If you use official accounts such as "Douyin E-commerce" and "Douyin Supermarket" to make live broadcasts and short videos in the information flow on the homepage, and divert traffic to Douyin Supermarket, that is another matter.
The short video platform also has a heart for e-commerce
The opening of Douyin Supermarket shows Douyin's enthusiasm for e-commerce.
Douyin, which started as a short video, officially established the e-commerce business department in June 2020, and it has only been three years since then.
In 2021, Douyin e-commerce will be positioned as an "interest e-commerce".
When you don’t have an immediate need, with the help of big data algorithms, through short videos, live broadcasts and other content, you may feel that the products on the screen may be of interest to you, and then you may have the desire to buy them. This is the logic of interest e-commerce.
Different from shelf e-commerce, which is based on the search behavior of "people looking for goods", interest e-commerce belongs to "goods looking for people", allowing us to complete purchases in products attached to short videos, live broadcasts and other content.
Traffic and content are what Douyin is good at, so it is logical to monetize traffic through interest e-commerce.
However, there should not be too many short videos for selling goods. After all, most people watch videos for entertainment, not for hot-headed spending.
"LatePost" reported that Douyin has tested many times in the first half of 2022, and found that once the e-commerce content displayed by Douyin exceeds 8%, the user retention and usage time of the main site will drop significantly.
This also means that interest e-commerce has a ceiling, so Douyin does not stick to one e-commerce model.
In May 2022, Douyin e-commerce put the "mall" entrance on the homepage, and clicking it will enter a shopping page similar to Taobao and Pinduoduo, which means it is on the front line with the e-commerce giant.
It is worth mentioning that at the beginning of 2022, Douyin e-commerce has listed the top 2,000 brand merchants with sales on Tmall, and plans to allow all of these brands to enter the Douyin "Mall". As of October 2022, about 92% of the target brands have entered Douyin.
The Douyin Supermarket this time is also similar, cutting into more daily and broader categories, and once again enriching the territory of the Douyin e-commerce kingdom.
Some people lament that the end of the Internet is e-commerce. In this smoldering war, the old king and the new king have not yet had a certain victory or defeat. They each hold their cards to make up for their shortcomings. For example, Douyin and Kuaishou are good at traffic and content, and Tmall, JD.com, Meituan, etc. master the supply chain and logistics. .
Wang Xing once said that "traffic alone is not enough, he has to be willing to do hard work" , especially for the long-term business of e-commerce.
From watching short videos to basic necessities
Douyin is a time black hole and a super traffic portal.
I don't know when Douyin has entered our lives and penetrated into our basic necessities of life.
Douyin is well aware of its own advantages, and has more plans in the field of local life.
Unlike Douyin Supermarket, which is almost separated from the information flow, Douyin’s local life directly relies on algorithms, and you can easily browse Daren’s store-exploring videos and brand official live broadcast rooms.
Short videos have more sound and light than pictures and texts, which are naturally suitable for arousing people's desire for food.
When you are so greedy that you are drooling, you can be directly guided to the group buying package, and then go to the nearby offline store to have a good meal.
Even the introverted new tea drinks have moved the arena to Douyin and started a price war.
A single cup of Heytea’s designated drink is 17.8 yuan, Naixue coffee series is 9.9 yuan for one of four choices, Shanghai Auntie milk tea is 9.9 yuan for two free choices, and Uncle Qiu’s lemon tea is 19 yuan for 2 cups…
▲ The short video is an important scene for ordering new tea drinks.
Almost all tea brands that can be named are doing Douyin group buying. Although the discount is generally not large, it is more cost-effective than placing an order directly at the store, giving people the feeling of taking advantage of it. Another advantage is that it can be refunded at any time, and it will be automatically refunded when it expires, so you are not afraid of regretting it after buying it.
In addition to group buying in stores, Douyin is also testing the water for group buying delivery, which is tantamount to testing in the field of food delivery.
In November last year, Douyin and Ele.me jointly launched the "Watch, Order, and Deliver" service, which was the first to be piloted in Nanjing to achieve a seamless experience of "watching videos and ordering food at the same time" .
In December last year , Douyin reached a cooperation with Dada, Flash Delivery, and SF Express in the same city to provide catering merchants with group purchase delivery in the same city. Beijing area can already deliver food to home.
Of course, for most users, shopping on JD.com and Tmall, and ordering food on Meituan and Ele.me are still the mainstream, while shopping on Douyin is random, and they don’t open Douyin to buy something. But if you find something you like, you may place an order.
Still, the scales are slowly tipping.
As of October 2022, Douyin’s life services have covered 377 cities across the country. Many people will include Douyin as a member of the “shopping around” and let it compete with “old qualifications” such as Meituan and Dianping. .
During the Chinese New Year this year, when I was buying tickets for scenic spots, I made a comparison between Meituan and Douyin group buying which was cheaper.
Colleagues also shared a story at the topic selection meeting. The elders don’t want the new mobile phone to have messy notifications. They only need to install WeChat and Douyin, and only remember when they are reminded. They should also download Alipay.
WeChat is a video account, Douyin is an e-commerce and local life, Twitter plans to introduce a payment function, and super apps are actually a trend in many social media and entertainment platforms, where you seem to be able to achieve a one-stop digital life.
The number of users is a necessary and insufficient condition for super applications, and the number of users means attention and traffic. When users are willing to stay and kill time, Douyin has already won at the starting line.
But this is the logic of "traffic is king". Going back to the simplest and most intuitive truth, Douyin finally has to answer with the quality and cost performance of the product, why we are willing and willing to buy things on an entertaining short video platform.
References:
New Entropy "Douyin Supermarket, Hit a Squib"
"Tik Tok, Officially Opening a Supermarket" by the investment community
Later, "The ceiling of live e-commerce is approaching, Douyin has found a new way out"
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