In the cross-border era, the wind of competition may come from the southeast and northwest!

Meituan may not have thought that one day it would be commented by netizens: "It may be Douyin who killed Meituan!"

Recently, Douyin quietly launched its "group buying" function, mainly serving businesses in the catering, hotel, and tourism industries. It has now landed in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Chengdu and other cities. According to media reports, a restaurant in Beijing sold 70,000 copies of a 299 yuan set meal in just two weeks, achieving revenue of 20 million+.

Douyin, which has been in the local life for a long time, finally opened up the positive and rigid relationship with Meituan. Douyin PK Meituan, who is better? There are too many factors that determine success or failure.

one

Netizens

How long can I stay?

Going in from the "same city" page on the homepage, you can see that the three new sections, "Preferential Group Buying", "Hot List", and "Heartbeat Restaurant (Points Activity)" occupy the top conspicuous position. Among them, "Preferential Group Buying" is the first entry.

In order to attract merchants to settle in, Douyin showed full "sincerity", opening a shopping cart with a zero threshold, and a technical service fee as low as 1%. This is a bit unique in the general environment of rising platform commissions and constant complaints from merchants. Alone. Without the squeeze of high commissions, businesses will be more confident in their operations, and at the same time they can be more beneficial to consumers. The current preferential policies of TikTok group purchase are a big killer for attracting merchants and users.

Low commissions and high subsidies are also the usual tactics for the start of local life platforms. Regarding the strategic behavior of Tik Tok’s group buying, many netizens’ first reaction is: “You can get a wave of wool again!” If you learn from the performance of other local life platforms after the high dividend period, the excitement of Tik Tok’s group buying opening may also be A kind of "illusion", the "illusion" brought up by the platform bonus.

According to the development trend of the local life platform in the past, once the platform dividend disappears, the platform may face the double loss of merchants and users. So, how many netizens who are keen on "wool wool" can settle down as loyal users of Douyin group purchase? Or, how long can Douyin's super-preferential policy persist, and how to complete the education of user habits during the preferential period to achieve a smooth connection with the fading period of dividends. These determine the development trend of Douyin's group buying to a certain extent.

two

Under the tuyere

More competition

Douyin has a long history of local life. The byte beating behind Tik Tok, as early as 2018, began to attack and try and error against local life.

In 2018, Douyin established a POI team. After trying various methods, it finally "paid the tuition." From 2018 to 2020, Douyin has not given up on the development of local life, but with little success. The turning point has happened in 2020. After the outbreak of the epidemic, short video platforms have become a lifesaver for many companies. Later, Douyin quickly made a series of actions, such as upgrading the corporate account, launching the group buying function, setting up hotel reservations, ticket booking entrances, launching heartbeat restaurants and city player activities, etc., and at the same time encouraging the uploading of shop exploration videos... At the same time, in December last year, ByteDance's commercialization department established a "local direct business center" dedicated to expanding local life business.

Why does Douyin keep stumbling on local life? Because the local life has been windy for a long time, and it is getting more and more prosperous. According to the data provided by the Tou Leopard Research Institute, the local life service market will reach 1.6 trillion in 2020; the Tou Leopard Research Institute predicts that the local life market will reach 2.8 trillion in 2024. Take takeaway as an example. The data in the "China Sharing Economy Development Report (2021)" released by the National Information Center shows that online takeaway revenue accounts for about 16.6% of the country’s total catering revenue.

 Local life has always been above the "wind". In the field of local life, not only are the two major traffic giants, Meituan and Ali, coming and going, and it is fun, but also ready to welcome the JD, Suning, Toutiao, Didi Haro and other platforms eager to try. Now, it has ushered in the high-profile entry of Douyin.

"Temptation" is directly proportional to competition, and the local living market is facing the eye of the giants. Each of the TikTok group buying competitions is strong, and whoever is more skilled will not have a definite answer in the short term.

three

Mature content recommendation mechanism

There are also conflicts in traffic

With the function of Douyin's corporate account, many traditional companies have changed their old image of "darkness" and re-attracted a large number of young traffic through content output. With short videos as the carrier, Douyin's mature content recommendation mechanism is its irreplaceable advantage.

Compared with the graphics and texts of Meituan and Dianping, short video content is more expressive, and Douyin has now taken the lead in the establishment of short video "punch-in" mentality. For enterprises, the short video content of Douyin is a promotion carrier with higher dissemination and better dissemination effect. Well, backed by the more than 550 million monthly active users of Douyin, coupled with a mature content recommendation mechanism, the golden partner of super traffic + high-quality content, is also a major reason why many people are optimistic about the group purchase of Douyin.

However, when short video traffic was suddenly introduced to the group buying sector, there are still many internal contradictions in Douyin's traffic.

1. Contradictions in offline drainage

Douyin's "begin" is a social platform, and its recommendation mechanism is based on the content ecology. After using algorithms to accurately distribute the content, it achieves the purpose of promoting offline experience through online grass planting.

Meituan's "begin" is an o2o platform, and its recommendation mechanism is based on consumption data, which makes recommendations after insight into consumers' consumption habits.

One is to make recommendations based on online browsing preferences, which is passive recommendation; the other is to make recommendations based on consumer preferences, which is to proactively solve user-defined needs, and the accuracy of its recommendation mechanism is self-evident. How to effectively divert lively online traffic to offline, or to achieve a two-way flow of online and offline traffic, is something that Meituan has been operating, and it is also a relatively weak sector of Douyin.

2. The contradiction between public domain and private domain

Douyin has 550 million monthly active users, which is public domain traffic; the enterprise account created by Douyin is the private domain traffic of the enterprise. Public domain traffic and private domain traffic are inherently contradictory.

Nowadays, it is generally believed that the dividend of public domain traffic is gradually losing, because it is more and more difficult to divert public domain traffic, and it is even more difficult to intercept public domain traffic and complete value conversion. Therefore, the voice of private domain traffic is getting louder and louder. Enterprise account, card check-in activities, group buying section, etc., provide enterprises with an entrance to intercept the public domain traffic pool. However, from public domain to private domain, from traffic to value, high-quality content, business operations, etc. are also needed. Blessings. For small and medium-sized enterprises, there are opportunities, but at the same time, it is also difficult.

3. The contradiction of user coincidence

Compared with Dianping and Meituan, Douyin users are more active. Douyin has a social advantage that Meituan and Dianping are hard to match. This social advantage can help users generate a sense of identity in content. Promote traffic conversion. Social attributes are also a service that Meituan has never given up on exploring. Socialized traffic is more active and sticky. The huge and younger social traffic of Douyin is also the foundation of Douyin's involvement in local life.

But the DNA of each platform determines the characteristics of platform traffic, such as the exquisite women of Xiaohongshu, the "small town youth" of Kuaishou and so on. Recently, an art-related event is running marketing. A large number of beautiful short videos were released in the circle of friends. Many friends asked if they wanted to pre-heat on Douyin, but she made it clear that the main marketing platform is Weibo, not Douyin. This involves a user coincidence problem. The combination of Meituan and Dianping allows "Xinmeida" to cover almost all food and beverage categories and grades. The traffic characteristics of Douyin determine its attractiveness to merchants. As far as it seems, a considerable number of high-end catering brands still hold a wait-and-see attitude or even reject the entry of Douyin. However, it has to be said that compared with Kuaishou, the traffic on the Douyin platform is more inclined to "urban", "high-end" and "young".

What Douyin wants to move is not Meituan's cheese. It aims at the entire local life ecology, a local life ecology based on short videos. Group buying is just an exploration portal. This portal is relatively lightweight and has low trial and error costs.

Regardless of the result, the arrival of Douyin will make the next competition in the local life field more exciting. If Douyin can break through the blockade of super rivals such as Meituan and Word of Mouth, transform from a pure short video social platform to a platform with dual engines for short video content and local life services, the pattern and service mode of local life Or will fundamentally change. For users and catering companies, such a change is indeed worth looking forward to.