---
title: "20 Suggestions for Community Group Buying Practitioners in 2021"
description: "This article offers 20 insights for community group buying practitioners in 2021, covering industry trends, competitive dynamics, and strategic advice. It predicts consolidation among major players and highlights opportunities in lower-tier markets."
author: "陈海超"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2021-02-06"
language: "en"
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---

# 20 Suggestions for Community Group Buying Practitioners in 2021

> This article offers 20 insights for community group buying practitioners in 2021, covering industry trends, competitive dynamics, and strategic advice. It predicts consolidation among major players and highlights opportunities in lower-tier markets.

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**-01-**
Years later, community group buying practitioners finally realize that we were not only pigs on the wind, but also trend-surfers. For those born in the 60s, 70s, and even 80s, community group buying might be the last train to start a business with an internet concept. Whether we reach the finish line is a matter of luck.
**-02-**
Community group buying is a new retail format that disguises itself with the internet but is essentially retail. It shows online e-commerce characteristics in transactions and offline store characteristics in delivery. It's a hybrid of online and offline, romantically speaking, a mermaid with a human face and fish tail.
**-03-**
Although the Z era has arrived, the main buyers in community group buying are women aged 28-55. Beyond age and gender, the target consumers are typically working-class or low-income. Two obvious behavioral traits are owning a Wuling car and never having flown.
**-04-**
With the pandemic ongoing and the "Nine No" policy, basic needs like cheap vegetables, warm clothing, and convenient bathing are paramount. Government policies balance between "anti-dumping" and "anti-price gouging." While exploring the stars is talk for first-class VIPs, affordable cabbage and scallions are what people care about. Users now have an additional contactless shopping option beyond supermarkets and online e-commerce—isn't that good?
**-05-**
Community group buying e-commerce products will become more diversified. First, B2B and B2C will continue to merge, even replacing FMCG B2B tracks. Second, not only will physical SKUs increase, but community life service products will also become regular listings.
**-06-**
Three camps—community e-commerce, community group buying, and new store retail—are forming. People come and go, everywhere is a besieged city, they compete and coexist, killing and loving each other.
**-07-**
As a new species, community group buying e-commerce will both capture incremental growth and raid existing stock. Who is being raided? Most people are wrong: it's not the wet market or small vegetable shops, but chain supermarkets—a nearly 5 trillion yuan market. For raiders, it's hope; for the raided, it's death. Overall, positional warfare will eliminate one-third of them, and in 2021, a big gap will open.
**-08-**
By next spring or summer, two of the top five community e-commerce players (Meituan, Didi, Pinduoduo, Alibaba, JD) will be eliminated, like the confused Meijia Maicai, the fading Baoneng Fresh, or the clueless Suning's Su Xiaotuan. The remaining giants will slowly endure; not dying is victory, like Sima Yi, the strategist of the Three Kingdoms.
**-09-**
As for the top four entrepreneurial platforms (Xingsheng, Shihuituan, Tongcheng, Shixianghui), Xingsheng Youxuan is forging ahead, Shihuituan is outwardly strong but inwardly weak, Shixianghui has exhausted its bad news, and Tongcheng Life is low-key. They will likely survive 2021, more comfortable and happier than the two big cats and three small giants.
**-10-**
After the brutal elimination in 2020, local community group buying groups that should have died are dead, and the rest have gained strong resilience. Local groups will show two states: industry leaders like Changsha Zhihuazhiguo, Daqing Jiubaijie, Zhengzhou Youjingyoutian, and Shandong Xiaoxiongle, while others just strive to survive.
**-11-**
As for new store retail, Xiaoai Alliance from Jining, Shandong, is a good example. Xiaobu Youxian didn't do well. Community group buying becoming a standard configuration for chain supermarkets is undisputed. Two key points: it must be a top-priority project, and new models require new organizational structures.
**-12-**
From an independent group perspective, internet-based store retail under Tuanmeng services is new store retail. Ants and soldiers look to Tuanmeng. Convenience store leaders who refuse to be captured are building their own private domain traffic. Tuanmeng, which abandoned group buying for group wholesale, acts as an arms dealer from the supply chain. Because it's thorough and extreme, it's doing very well.
**-13-**
Underestimated community property management will closely integrate with community group buying e-commerce, upgrading to community economy. Community group buying will become an organic part of the community economy. Real estate owners with money join low-margin new business models—a clash of Mars and Earth, worth watching.
**-14-**
From an entrepreneurial window perspective, second-tier provincial capitals have closed. Fourth-tier counties are too small to support an independent platform. Third-tier prefecture-level cities still have opportunities. Following the principle of Tian Ji's horse racing, in third-tier cities you compete with the five giants (Meituan, Didi, Pinduoduo, Alibaba, JD) and the four old groups (Xingsheng, Shihuituan, Tongcheng, Shixianghui). If you can't even beat their lower horses, admit you're useless.
**-15-**
SaaS providers for platforms are having a tough time. The five giants and four old groups will definitely develop their own SaaS. Losing the richest sponsors, only local groups and chain supermarkets remain as customers.
**-16-**
Being a community group buying supplier is a tough business. Traffic belongs to the platform, brands to manufacturers. Suppliers just touch the oil when passing the fried dough sticks. In rhythm control, first give profits for scale, then give scale for profits. Think carefully—there's a lot to learn.
**-17-**
Shared warehouses are not a good business because this socially invested infrastructure can be replaced by platform-led collaborative warehouses at any time.
**-18-**
Grid warehouses are a good business, especially for FMCG distributors in lower-tier markets (3rd, 4th, 5th tiers). It's an incremental opportunity, but not recommended for brand-new startups due to heavy operations and poor ROI.
**-19-**
Same-city delivery looks attractive, but because platforms differ in products, times, service areas, delivery routes, and leader density, standardization is impossible, and without standardization, scaling is impossible. This dividend belongs to Huolala. Self-organized individual links are a natural match for community group buying e-commerce.
**-20-**
The era of group products has arrived! The supermarket era created supermarket brands, the e-commerce era created e-commerce brands, and even the micro-business boom created micro-business brands. So, in the community group buying e-commerce era, it's the opportunity for group brands. Believe it or not, it's up to you.
As a marketing strategy consultant delayed by community group buying, in 2019 almost every day someone asked if they could start a platform. In 2020, that question came weekly. In 2021, it will become monthly.
A glimpse reveals the whole picture—you understand.


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