Click the image above for details Regarding Meituan's entry into community group buying, many people have asked recently, so I will answer collectively here. Event: According to Meituan's announcement, the "Youxuan Business Unit" will launch a community group buying business—Meituan Select—focusing on lower-tier markets, adopting a "pre-order + self-pickup" model to empower community convenience stores. "Pre-order + self-pickup" captures the core logic of community group buying. Pre-order allows collecting customers' money first, using cash to purchase goods, thus lowering purchase prices. Moreover, since goods are already sold, suppliers don't need to handle returns, allowing prices to be a few points cheaper. Customer self-pickup reduces delivery costs. These two cost reductions mean customers can buy goods at lower prices. "Empowering community convenience stores": For Meituan, convenience stores serve as pickup points; for stores, Meituan offers differentiated product structures. The two complement each other's resources. Since Meituan lacks no traffic, orders can be completed on Meituan's app, so it doesn't necessarily need to use the WeChat group traffic of convenience stores. In other words, it can pay stores only a pickup management fee without giving traffic commissions. In terms of order-taking technology, it no longer relies on store WeChat groups but directly opens a "next-day self-pickup" option on Meituan's various apps. Regarding product sourcing: Next-day delivery determines that Meituan will mainly cooperate with local distributors in the business area, selling goods from distributor warehouses. This logic is the same as Xing Sheng Youxuan's approach. Many chain store owners wonder how Xing Sheng's selling price can be cheaper than their purchase price. The secret is pre-sale: using customers' prepaid money to purchase goods with cash, driving down supply prices, typically reducing standard product costs by over 15%. Meituan's "community convenience stores" in the long term specifically refer to mom-and-pop stores, unlikely to be chain stores. Even if chains cooperate with Meituan short-term, they will find it easy to do this themselves and will eventually clear out. So last year, I made a judgment that there will only be two types of community group buying in the future: First, chain-store-led: the chain's headquarters organizes products, delivery, and traffic operations, with subordinate stores as pickup points. Second, supply-chain-platform-led: cooperating with mom-and-pop stores, where the platform handles product organization and delivery, and mom-and-pop stores serve as pickup points. What Meituan intends to do is 90% similar to what Furong Xing Sheng is doing. The one difference is that Xing Sheng buys traffic from mom-and-pop stores for every transaction, while Meituan has its own traffic, so stores only need to manage pickups. Thus, Meituan's cost structure will inevitably be better than Xing Sheng's. Let's talk about Alibaba: Cainiao is piloting community group buying, with an existing community pickup network and abundant traffic. The problem is that Alibaba uses RT-Mart for supply chain, and RT-Mart's goods are bought on credit, with suppliers giving higher prices. So the advantage of low pre-sale purchase prices cannot be realized. Alibaba's top management hasn't figured this out yet. As for whether Cainiao's business will follow the chain-store-led model or the "supply chain platform + mom-and-pop store" model, it depends on whether Cainiao exercises strong or weak control over franchise points. Strong control means managing all supply chain matters and not allowing franchise points to access other supply chains, resulting in a chain-store model; weak control allows franchise points to connect to other supply chains, making Cainiao just one supply chain, resulting in the "supply chain platform + mom-and-pop store" model. Whether terminal points are allowed to cooperate with other supply chains is the core difference between the two models. The model where mothers are group leaders and their homes are pickup points will face prominent contradictions as pre-sale scale grows: amateur players have high costs and low space efficiency, making it unsuitable for corporate operations. It can only be done on a small scale by individuals. Although many think mothers have traffic and are opinion leaders, in my view, these are insignificant compared to low costs. Now about JD.com: JD has three major advantages: First, warehouses distributed across regions, which are excellent for sorting. Second, JD lacks no traffic. Third, JD has cooperated with many mom-and-pop stores, making pickup points readily available. The problem lies with JD Digits, formerly JD Finance. It lends money to suppliers using funds that should be paid to them. So JD's payment terms are long, leading to higher supply prices. Lending is lucrative, and JD Digits is seeking an IPO, so it won't change payment terms. This means most goods passing through JD cannot be used for community group buying. So I judge that although Brother Dong (Liu Qiangdong) can see this big opportunity, he will miss it. Preparation for this scenario requires not only production capacity but also matching production relations. Retailers with delayed payments and suppliers requiring customer deposits will be abandoned by this scenario. Slow settlement and tying up customer funds will render even strong warehousing and distribution or massive traffic useless. Finally, let's talk about WeChat: WeChat is already the biggest beneficiary of this scenario because current community group buying transactions occur in WeChat groups and must use WeChat Pay. I estimate that WeChat will provide greater support to players using WeChat groups and WeChat Pay, such as chain stores and group buying companies, to prevent Alibaba from expanding this scenario. After all, this scenario is much larger than bike-sharing or ride-hailing. I suggest paying attention to WeChat Pay's split payment feature: when customers pay for orders, using WeChat Pay's split capability distributes funds to retailers, group leaders, pickup points, and suppliers in their respective WeChat Pay accounts, with funds unfrozen after delivery. This enables faster capital flow and more efficient collaboration. I predict that WeChat Pay will completely defeat Alipay because behind WeChat Pay is a more efficient collaboration system organized by people waiting to share profits; Alipay is just a value transfer tool. Alibaba will want to do this later, but not enough people have Alipay accounts, making it difficult. Compared to national e-commerce giants, I favor regional localized chain retail institutions. Pre-sale is a universal sales technology in the mobile internet environment; Xing Sheng can use it, Meituan can use it, and chain stores can too. Once all learn it, the competition comes down to comprehensive strength: product organization capability + delivery network + traffic cost. In terms of product organization, pre-sale mainly involves selling goods from local distributor warehouses, and chain stores are the largest clients of local distributors, so they can organize well. For delivery networks, chain stores' central warehouses serve as sorting centers, stores as pickup points, and existing logistics capabilities are reused for group buying goods. Delivery costs can be controlled at around 3%. For traffic costs, regional chains only need to pull in-store customers into WeChat groups to form a massive traffic pool, whose local influence won't be less than that of e-commerce giants. Once chain stores get into group buying, they will be the strongest locally. Current resistance is mainly internal. These chains have always purchased goods before selling and have never done pre-sale. Their management systems (procurement, finance, logistics) are designed for selling in-stock goods and cannot adapt to selling futures. How to make this transition? I wrote a book, "The Third Retail: A Primer for Chain Store Community Group Buying," which you can click to purchase. Finally, answer a few questions: Question 1: Teacher Lian, Meituan recently established the "Youxuan Business Unit" to launch community group buying "Meituan Select" (model: empowering community convenience stores, pre-order + self-pickup), targeting lower-tier markets. Wang Xing has elevated the strategic position of this business unit, and the industry is optimistic, thinking Meituan can replicate its restaurant industry online experience to traditional wet markets, bringing a major player to community group buying. How do you view the impact of Meituan's high-profile entry on the existing competitive landscape? Answer: Meituan has completed the online transformation of the restaurant industry, which is good. This community group buying is mainly about the online transformation of distributor inventory. Past experience is useful but also different. Distributors are public resources; they sell goods for cash, and everyone is the same. The biggest difference is the competitors. In the first phase, competitors are Xing Sheng Youxuan and similar; Meituan will likely win because its traffic cost is low. In the second phase, competitors are local chain stores; Meituan will likely lose because chains have lower delivery costs. Another possibility is that local distributors will organize themselves into supply chain platforms. Local mom-and-pop stores are already their customers, and delivery systems are ready-made. The challenge is whether distributors can fully understand this business, shed outdated management mechanisms, and build new ones for this scenario. Question 2: Do you favor Meituan doing community group buying? Besides Meituan, Hema, JD, and Suning also intend to expand fresh food business through community group buying. What advantages and disadvantages do you see in these big platforms entering now? Answer: Already answered in the article. Question 3: Some say with these giants entering, community group buying will explode this year. What's your view? Answer: Pre-sale is a universal dividend brought by mobile internet to the retail industry. Retail learning pre-sale is a gradual process, and this market will continue to grow over the next three to five years.