---
title: "From the Current Buzz of Community Group Buying to the New E-commerce and Communities It Spawns"
description: "Community group buying, a new e-commerce model that leverages WeChat groups and neighborhood trust, has emerged as a hot investment area, focusing on fresh produce for residents in second- to fourth-tier cities. While it offers advantages in customer acquisition and logistics costs, its long-term viability depends on overcoming challenges in supply chain, user experience, and reliance on WeChat."
author: "白树Shu"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2018-11-12"
categories: "E-commerce & Instant Retail"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/XO1OKDr-Q88EZ40QZB8USA"
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citation: "白树Shu. “From the Current Buzz of Community Group Buying to the New E-commerce and Communities It Spawns.” New Distribution, 2018-11-12. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/from-the-current-buzz-of-community-group-buying-to-the-new-e-commerce-an-be46affa/"
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---

# From the Current Buzz of Community Group Buying to the New E-commerce and Communities It Spawns

> Community group buying, a new e-commerce model that leverages WeChat groups and neighborhood trust, has emerged as a hot investment area, focusing on fresh produce for residents in second- to fourth-tier cities. While it offers advantages in customer acquisition and logistics costs, its long-term viability depends on overcoming challenges in supply chain, user experience, and reliance on WeChat.

Few people remember Lashou.com now. Many still know Ge You, and the Lashou.com he endorsed was once all the rage back in 2011, though that was already seven years ago. In 2010, more than 4,000 group-buying websites sprang up across the country, a period known as the "Thousand Group-Buying Wars." Lashou was the hottest of them all during that frenzied battle eight years ago. The skies change, the horizon falls with the setting sun each day, until a new dawn rises... Fast forward to eight years later, the Thousand Group-Buying Wars are long over, and Meituan went public in the fall of 2018. In August 2018, the summer was still hot, and reportedly more than eight companies in the domestic group-buying sector secured funding—but this time, it wasn't pure group buying; it was combined with communities, called "community group buying," a new track. Linlinyi, Dailuobo, Niwonin, Shihuituan, Shixianghui... a host of fresh community group-buying companies emerged within a month, announcing billion-yuan funding rounds. Among them were giants: Tencent-invested Miss Fresh soon launched community group buying in Shijiazhuang, and there was even Meituan-affiliated Squirrel Pinduoduo, Alibaba's He Shequn... Different funders, but the same story: they all seem to start with fresh produce. Eight years later, the group-buying business feels as scorching as a highway at noon in summer, reminiscent of the eve of the Thousand Group-Buying Wars. But this time, how long will the community group-buying fire burn and flicker? What exactly is community group buying? What does its future hold? To answer these questions, this article attempts to discuss and address the following points:
> 1) What is community group buying? What is the background of its birth?
>
> 2) Overnight, why have community group buying and fresh produce become capital's darlings? Where is its value?
>
> 3) What problems exist in community group buying? Where are its barriers and core competitiveness?
>
> 4) Based on community group buying, where will the development trends of community group buying and e-commerce head in the coming years?
>
> 5) Extending from community group buying, what would a better group-buying or e-commerce model look like?

**(1) What is community group buying? What is the background of its birth?**
Let's first discuss: What factors contributed to the birth of community group buying? What is community group buying? Remember when Pinduoduo just went public, the slogan that popped up on the webpage was: "300 million people are shopping on Pinduoduo." That number startled many at the time. Under the noses of e-commerce giants Taobao and JD.com, Pinduoduo carved out a path to success. By targeting and satisfying the overlooked "beyond the Fifth Ring Road" population, and by leveraging WeChat's social dividend to the extreme, it achieved an IPO in just three years. This summer, while people were hotly debating whether the popularity of Wujiang pickles on Pinduoduo and JD.com signaled consumption upgrading or downgrading, the community group-buying track was already heating up. **This time, inspired by Pinduoduo, community group buying has bitten into the fresh produce sector that Pinduoduo struggles to cover, focusing on distribution and delivery to the main demographic in second-, third-, and fourth-tier city communities.** A Japanese writer once said, "Objects are self-projection." Everything you buy is a projection of your self-awareness, psychological needs, and life values onto the object. I deeply agree. In recent years, on social media, internet-famous brands like Heytea, Sang Tea, Answer Tea, Yidiandian, and Funtang have emerged. **Consumption is increasingly segmented by generation—post-70s vs. post-90s, post-90s vs. post-00s—and consumption stratification is becoming more common.** **This era lacks neither goods nor channels to buy them.** What is lacking? In reality, among residents in second-, third-, and fourth-tier communities, under the pressure of mortgages, car loans, and cash loans, what people lack most is cash in their pockets, high cost-performance, good quality at low prices, and better, more convenient channels to buy these goods. **The masses' pursuit of high cost-performance, affordability, and good quality has never stopped.** **And high cost-performance and socialization seem to be standard for new e-commerce.** Community group buying satisfies both cost-performance and socialization. **Against this backdrop, community group buying was born.** **So, what exactly is community group buying?** In Changsha, Hunan, when community group buying was hot, you might easily be pulled into a WeChat group by neighbors or friends to buy fruit. The actual scenario of community group buying is: based on real offline communities, group buying is opened through WeChat groups for pre-sale, gathering the needs of people in the same community into one group, paying via WeChat, then delivering to the community entrance for unified self-pickup. Of course, it's not just fresh produce and fruit; it also includes food, daily necessities, and even household items. **In essence, community group buying is an e-commerce channel based on real LBS communities, driven by the C-end (consumer end) to drive the B-end (supply end).** Innovation comes in two types: technological innovation and model innovation. In terms of innovation, community group buying is a micro-innovation in e-commerce channels and models. Is community group buying a technological innovation? Clearly not. Currently, the entry barrier for community group buying is not high; it doesn't require particularly advanced technology. The main participants are stay-at-home moms and group leaders in communities, along with community group-buying companies that supply and support delivery to the group leaders. So, strictly speaking, community group buying is a micro-innovation in model. Compared to other e-commerce channels, it typically uses three standard tools: WeChat groups, mini-programs, and WeChat Pay. Essentially, current community group buying is an e-commerce channel that lives within the WeChat ecosystem. Perhaps one day it can become independent with its own app. In fact, the group leader is both a seller and a consumer in the community, operating based on geographically close communities, so community group buying is a shopping scenario built on trust and emotion, with warmth. If goods go bad, it can easily damage neighborly relations; **in fact, what matters more than the goods in community group buying might not be the goods themselves, but the emotions and WeChat groups behind them.** **So, how long can community group buying last? Where is its value support?**

**(2) Overnight, why have community group buying and fresh produce become capital's darlings? Where is the value?**
To see how long something can last, first ask what problems it solves and where its value lies. Let's first discuss: **What are the differences between community group buying and traditional group buying, and between community group buying and traditional e-commerce?** Let's start with group buying. **The original intention of group buying was for merchants to attract a large number of customers quickly with a lower-than-normal price, bringing in traffic and sales, while customers enjoy a discount lower than normal purchase.** Current group-buying platforms and forms generally fall into two types: **One is where merchants directly offer a promotional price, and consumers buy directly on the group-buying page to complete the purchase.** Represented by Meituan and Juhuasuan. The advantage is that the barrier for consumers to buy and participate is very low; they can buy directly without even making a reservation. Merchants can easily recoup funds in the short term through low group-buying prices. **But the disadvantages are also obvious:** For example, merchants originally hoped to attract customers to the store with low prices, but now customers are already in the store and enjoy the low price directly rather than the normal price. This means merchants haven't attracted a large number of customers to the store because of the low price; instead, they often give discounts to customers who are already there, and they also have to pay a not-insignificant commission to the group-buying website. Over time, merchants on the platform compete on price, driving profits down and operating costs up. Consumers, due to rising costs for group buying and merchants, often receive lower service quality, and sometimes the price isn't much lower than the original. Over time, consumer trust in group-buying platforms and merchants declines. **Another form of group buying is: merchants also offer promotional group-buying prices, but consumers need to form a group.** Unlike the traditional one-price model, this requires sharing a purchase link with friends to form a group; once the group reaches the required number, the goods are shipped and the purchase is completed. This form is represented by the newly listed Pinduoduo. Essentially, the group-buying form is a pre-sale model; it has a higher barrier for consumer participation than direct group buying, but it's also more fun. Merchants can use group buying to collect consumers scattered across cities and then ship in bulk. Consumers can invite friends or group with strangers, quickly driving traffic to the platform and merchants; with more buyers, prices can be lowered due to volume. This model has some innovation and social interaction. **But the disadvantages are also obvious:** Besides the generally cheap products due to low group-buying prices, customers can't see merchants online, increasing trust costs. Moreover, forming a group before shipping adds time and barriers to purchase, and consumers scattered across the country don't reduce logistics costs or waiting time. As group buying develops, consumers may find it less convenient than direct group buying. **What about the current community group-buying method?** Typically, the group-buying company offers a low price and product link directly on a WeChat mini-program, and the group leader throws it into the WeChat group for group-buying price, with pre-sale and self-pickup within a specified time; no group formation is needed. Interaction and consultation happen in the WeChat group. In terms of customer acquisition cost, community group buying uses the community WeChat groups and neighborly relationships established by group leaders to acquire customers and interact, giving it a cost advantage over traditional group-buying websites. It's also simpler to operate than group-buying websites. In terms of purchase method, there's no need to form a group; you buy directly through the group-buying page in the WeChat group, which is relatively simple and convenient. In terms of logistics costs, the pre-sale method via WeChat groups can collect the needs of community users first, combine them into a large order, and then ship to a single community address, optimizing logistics costs. **It seems that community group buying, compared to traditional group buying and group-buying, has advantages in customer acquisition cost and logistics in the ideal model.** **What are the differences and advantages of community group buying compared to traditional e-commerce platforms?** **First, in customer acquisition cost:** Traditional e-commerce typically acquires customers through search and paid traffic ads. As online traffic rankings and costs have risen in recent years, many merchants have fled, leading to the emergence of new e-commerce platforms like Pinduoduo that leverage WeChat sharing and fission for rapid customer acquisition and growth. However, things are developing faster now; perhaps inspired by Pinduoduo's rapid rise, community group buying has started a funding model. In customer acquisition, community group buying uses stay-at-home moms scattered across cities and communities to first establish WeChat groups, then directly conduct consultation, interaction, and discussion in the groups, and finally place orders through mini-program links. It seems the customer acquisition cost for community group buying is relatively low, driven by moms at almost zero cost. **In product pricing:** Traditional e-commerce typically involves searching for products, comparing prices on shelves, and then deciding to buy, which easily leaves many merchants at the bottom unnoticed, even competing on price. As traffic costs rise, the final price consumers pay is not lower than physical stores, sometimes even higher. Pinduoduo mainly uses low-price group buying; prices seem discounted, but the quality and brand awareness of products on the platform are low. **Community group buying, through centralized pre-sale and unified delivery from origin or local warehouses for self-pickup, can indeed achieve a balance of price and quality with high cost-performance.** **In purchase method:** Traditional e-commerce mainly involves proactive searching; with a wide variety of products, consumers have many choices but lack reference and advice. Pinduoduo mainly uses group buying; often, to enjoy low prices, you need to share with friends, which is a relatively high barrier. Meituan mainly offers direct low prices. Community group buying allows direct consultation and purchase in WeChat groups, with relatively strong interactivity and timely feedback, and a simpler purchase process. **In logistics costs:** Traditional e-commerce mainly delivers via express logistics after ordering; the fulfillment cost per order is relatively high. Pinduoduo also ships via express to different addresses after group formation, so logistics costs are not low either. Community e-commerce, because a group pre-sale can gather a large order and ship to a single community address, invisibly reduces logistics costs, a clear advantage. **In capital:** Since community group buying uses a pre-sale model where customers pay first and merchants ship after receiving funds, there's a certain demand before preparing certain goods, which can greatly reduce capital risk and inventory turnover risk. Traditional e-commerce typically has certain goods first and then seeks uncertain customers, so capital and inventory risks are higher. **In labor costs:** Traditional e-commerce mainly hires dedicated operations and customer service staff for pre- and post-sale consultation. Community group buying mainly mobilizes part-time stay-at-home moms scattered across communities as community partners, not salaried employees, so labor costs are almost zero. **In summary, as a new e-commerce channel, community group buying has certain advantages in customer acquisition cost, logistics cost, labor cost, capital cost, and price cost.** **Most fundamentally:** **Community group buying starts with certain demand and then prepares certain goods.** **Traditional e-commerce starts with certain goods and inventory, then seeks uncertain customers.** Naturally, costs are lower. So looking back, it's not hard to understand why community group buying can attract a lot of capital in the short term. As an innovation in e-commerce channels, its heat has value. **But will this shopping form, which relies on WeChat groups for distribution, last long?** **What risks and problems exist in community group buying?**

**(3) What problems exist in community group buying? Where are its barriers and core competitiveness?**
There is no absolute perfection in this world; when God opens a window, He may also close a door. Traditional e-commerce and emerging social e-commerce have many advantages, but also obvious disadvantages. Community group buying is no exception. **Where are the drawbacks and barriers of community group buying?**
1. **Community group buying is only a micro-innovation in e-commerce channels and models. The value of a channel, in today's context of abundant sales channels, is not as easy to form core competitiveness and barriers as technological innovation.** As a model innovation and micro-innovation, it often means: the entry barrier is not high, barriers are low, and there may be many participants and imitators, leading to intense competition. Community e-commerce is essentially an e-commerce channel, a sales channel. In the past, retail had a saying: "Channel is king." But now, e-commerce platforms are everywhere, and there are too many channels. Moreover, the value of channels is not as prominent today as before. Essentially, Walmart is a sales channel, Taobao is a channel, JD is a channel, Pinduoduo is a channel, WeChat mini-programs are channels, and even offline convenience stores and FamilyMart are sales channels. These channels share a common feature: they hardly produce goods; they just aggregate goods from various manufacturers and brands, essentially acting as goods movers, earning either entry fees, traffic distribution fees, or basic product price differences. Like the Nongfu Spring ad: "I don't produce water; I'm just the porter of water." As a porter, if you can't quickly form volume today, you're actually in the non-core layer of the industry chain. Channels can only earn considerable price differences or traffic distribution fees by relying on huge traffic and sales. **The best retail brand model is actually one where goods are produced and defined by oneself, and the online and offline channels for selling goods are also controlled by oneself.** Typical examples include Zara selling clothes worldwide, Apple selling phones, and Starbucks selling coffee. Of course, there are also Uniqlo, Muji, Xiaomi Home, and Hema Fresh. Also, you'll notice that Walmart and FamilyMart are no longer satisfied with just being goods movers; they are now starting to sell their own branded products and food. So today, the value of channels is not as prominent as before. It can even be said that **with the increase of decentralized e-commerce channels represented by WeChat official accounts and mini-programs, e-commerce and retail are no longer channel-king, but product + channel-king. The market doesn't lack channels; it lacks new, unique, good products.** **So, as an e-commerce channel, where are the barriers for community group buying?** In the long run, the core of community group buying lies in: **supply chain and user experience.** When it comes to e-commerce, user experience is inseparable; it's about solving buying and selling issues, including quality and price, software experience, and after-sales. Similarly, community e-commerce includes several key elements: **display app, supply chain, payment, logistics, receipt, and after-sales.** Among these, **which link is the most important, scarcest, and core competitiveness?** Let's look: the target audience of community group buying is mainly based on local communities, which are naturally close to users but also limited by geographical circles. Older residents in communities may prefer buying fruit and fresh produce at offline stores. The age group of community group-buying consumers is mainly post-70s to post-90s. These people have habits of ordering takeout and buying fruit online, and orders are mainly placed in WeChat groups under the guidance of group leaders. Initially, customers may not care much about software use because they are in the WeChat group scenario, which is highly interactive and immediate. If fruit is not fresh once or twice, it might be okay, but after three or four times, neighbors will feel awkward. Also, logistics should ideally allow same-day group buying and next-day delivery, which is ideal. Take a vivid example: when you sit at home and want to buy 2 jin of fruit, you can use Meituan Waimai because it's fast enough. You can also use JD Daojia or JD Super's fresh channel; speed and quality are acceptable. Among these, is software experience more important, or group leader resources, or logistics or delivery? But the most basic point is: if the fruit you receive after ordering is often unstable in quality, often not fresh, and the price is not cheaper than physical stores, then it's hard for neighbors in the community to continue buying from community group buying. Considering logistics and product selection, the second half of community group buying will definitely exist in the form of physical store warehouses + communities. So, in the long run, the core of community group buying lies in: supply chain and user experience. Essentially, it's trust and warmth. Then, considering product selection and supply chain:
2. **How can community group buying ensure a continuous supply of fresh, cheap, and reliable products to the residents behind the group leaders?**
3. **How to ensure the richness of product categories in community group buying? Besides monotonous fresh produce and fruit, are there also food, daily necessities, and even one-stop household items? This is a challenge.**
4. **How to ensure that orders placed on the same day can be received the next day? This is also an important challenge.**
To ensure consistently good products, categories, and logistics, you need enough product selection and operations staff, and more importantly, enough warehouse density close to users, and fast, fresh cold-chain logistics. These are infrastructure and heavy investments. Once you increase categories, logistics and supply chain costs rise; seven or eight categories are easier to control in quality and speed, but when SKUs increase to seventy or eighty, logistics and supply chain costs rise rapidly. However, too few SKUs and categories make consumers feel there's too little and too monotonous. Also, building enough dense warehouses, close enough to users, and fast enough delivery means various costs rise rapidly; whether there's a long-term price and convenience advantage over physical stores is an important question. In fact, the most important thing is: community group buying is based on WeChat groups for customer acquisition and purchase, heavily relying on WeChat groups and group leaders for new customer acquisition.
5. **As competition intensifies, there will be more and more community group-buying companies and shopping WeChat groups. Will people stay fresh and get used to this noisy shopping scenario and method of buying in WeChat groups?** WeChat groups are highly interactive, but consumers may need to constantly watch jumping group messages. As community group-buying platforms increase, a consumer in the same community might join several community companies' WeChat groups simultaneously, watching several groups at once, easily causing disturbance and aesthetic fatigue. Also, since community group-buying leaders are usually stay-at-home moms and individuals without physical store support, picking up goods at a community point may cause instability and distrust due to the lack of a physical store.
6. **Should there be physical store support? Is it better to adopt the form of community store + community, or directly mom + community?** Perhaps there's no absolute; using different tactics and market strategies at different stages is feasible. In the early stage, there may be no physical store support, but in the middle and later stages, stores and warehouses will definitely need to be added. If physical stores are used, community expansion and growth will be slower, the model heavier, and costs significantly higher, but consumer trust will be better. If no physical stores are used, directly using the mom + community model can quickly expand communities, but in the long run, without physical store support, once consumers experience aesthetic fatigue or product control fails, trust and performance will be hard to sustain.
7. **As a group-buying channel, under intense competition, how can community group-buying companies ensure that community leaders have long-term, sustained dividends, and after dividends, continue to ensure sufficient gross margin and competitiveness of group-buying products?** The growth and new customer acquisition of community group buying often rely heavily on community leaders. At the same time, group buying itself is not a high-margin or high-barrier sales channel. These two factors determine that the long-term growth of the community group-buying model has certain problems and risks.
8. **Finally, as an e-commerce model living in the WeChat ecosystem, community group buying heavily depends on WeChat's future official policies, user habits, and user stickiness, which brings potential uncertainty risks to the future stable development of community group-buying companies.**
**The above 8 points are my thoughts on the problems and risks of community group buying.**

**(4) Based on community group buying, where will the development trends of community group buying and e-commerce head in the coming years?**
After careful consideration, here are 9 points:
1. **Future community group buying should move away from WeChat groups.** As competition intensifies, group-buying companies will gradually cultivate consumers' habit of ordering on their WeChat mini-programs. When enough consumers know about community group buying and group-buying mini-programs, the final purchase scenario may no longer be WeChat groups but directly migrate to a community group-buying company's mini-program and platform. Group leaders will no longer focus on maintaining groups; they may eventually evolve into integrators or store managers of surrounding community life stores.
2. **Community group buying may just be one of many consumption forms, and may even evolve into a membership-based consumption channel similar to Costco. Consumption channels and forms will become increasingly diverse.** Besides in-store scenarios, consumers can also experience and buy at offline stores, and in the future, they can stay home and use home scenarios. Through takeout channels, traditional search-based e-commerce channels, social e-commerce channels based on social and content sharing recommendations, and various group-buying channels and mini-program channels, they can all buy. Consumption channels will become increasingly stratified and personalized.
3. **Some community group-buying companies may evolve into a supply chain, supplying and delivering to external stores and channels.** As a channel innovation, the product selection for community group buying is actually more suitable for new, unique, non-standardized products, because such products can have controllable gross margins and growth space.
4. **E-commerce channels are increasingly sinking, including warehouses and stores, getting closer to users, communities, and third- and fourth-tier cities.** Community stores have the advantage of being close to users, so the community economy and community stores have good growth potential.
5. **Based on the balance of consumer experience and efficiency costs, the best retail channel is a combination of online and offline, with store and warehouse integration.** In a place close enough to users, there are both offline stores for hands-on experience and nearby warehouses for fast delivery of products and services to homes, balancing user experience and supply-side efficiency costs.
6. **Domestic group-buying companies and platforms can be seen as a new type of membership-based e-commerce platform. Meituan Group Buying can currently be seen as a 0-membership-fee offline membership e-commerce platform.** In the past, membership often involved buying a membership card first, then enjoying special rights when consuming, mostly price discounts. Group buying and group-buying are a form of membership benefits that don't require a card and have a low threshold. Moreover, group buying, besides the membership discounts from collective participation, also has the warmth and fun of social interaction.
7. **As goods circulate faster, prices of standardized products will become more transparent. In consumption channels, the personalization of products and brands and the convenience of obtaining services will increasingly become the core competitiveness of merchants and retail channels.** With more consumption channels, information asymmetry decreases. Instead, companies and channels that provide personalized products and fast, convenient service will be increasingly favored by consumers. At the same time, people group by kind, and the stratification of consumer groups and consumption channels will become more distinct.
8. **Interactive, social e-commerce channels based on content and subscriptions will account for a larger proportion in the future.** Social interaction can make shopping warm and fun, and the essence of social e-commerce is consensus and discounts brought by sharing and interaction, which is bottom-up, driven by downstream users to drive upstream supply, a C2B model. Traditional search-based, people-find-goods shelf-style e-commerce platforms will gradually introduce membership systems and socialization.
9. **Same-city logistics and same-city e-commerce will increase. As warehouses and store channels sink, consumers demand faster speeds. E-commerce can only reach and obtain goods and services quickly and conveniently if it is based on the same city and community.**

**(5) Extending from community group buying, what would a better group-buying or e-commerce model look like?**
**The trend of e-commerce is definitely getting closer to users: fast, good, and economical.** Is there an e-commerce model that extends and upgrades from community group buying? Let's discuss: Based on the upgrade of community group buying, on the basis of social interaction and transactions, build a platform that initially supplies goods and logistics to group leaders. In the later stage, aggregate enough community group-buying leaders and local services from surrounding communities onto one platform and mini-program. Group leaders and store owners can be certified, and after certification, they can independently publish products and transact. Based on transactions, they can also interact in the mini-program through community forums and fish pond conversations, allowing enough community residents to shop while interacting socially. With enough group leaders and local merchants actively opening groups, based on the same city, extend a **community social** e-commerce platform close enough to users? For example, with a 3-kilometer radius around the community as the boundary, when you want to buy fruit, you can directly go to this platform and see certified group leaders or store owners within 3 kilometers offering group-buying fruit and life services. Once products and local services are published, people in nearby communities can join the group, pick up directly at the store, and enjoy group-buying prices. That's not the most important thing; the key is:
1. **There's a community and social atmosphere.** You can see community users within 3 kilometers, see who nearby is also buying the same product, who nearby has joined a group, and post shopping and food posts, similar to Xiaohongshu. You can even join a community fish pond, similar to Xianyu's fish pond, for interaction and chat like in WeChat groups, no longer in the noisy WeChat groups. After group buying, you can directly share and interact with people in nearby communities.
2. **Volume changes prices; participation allows you to enjoy discounts and interactive fun.** The more people, the greater the discount. The first 5 and last 5 joiners enjoy different tiered discounts. Volume changes prices; one person can also form a group and buy directly, but the discount will be relatively smaller. At the same time, group leaders and store owners can establish nearby fish ponds. By joining community fish ponds, you can not only meet more friends in surrounding communities but also enjoy group-buying discounts from collective participation, making local community life and e-commerce warmer.
3. **Through the model of pre-sale + in-store pickup, reduce merchants' capital and inventory risks.** For example, you can pre-sell fruit in the morning and pick it up in the afternoon; you can also open a group pre-sale for nearby beauty, hairdressing, or catering services 2 hours in advance, and after the pre-sale ends, you can directly go to the store to consume. For example:
The above is a new e-commerce model extended from community group buying. Well, let's call the model and project name: Linlin Community
> **Positioning:** Social community e-commerce within 3 kilometers.
>
> **Mission:** In the vast city, make communities and e-commerce real and warm.
>
> **Model:** Offline community store + online community + online social = Linlin Community.
The key points to achieve are:
1. Make certified group leaders happy to open groups on the platform, because they can attract fans within 3 kilometers based on the community, building a more active community than WeChat groups.
2. Build a warm, personalized, transparent, and interactive shopping method based on offline same-city nearby communities.
3. Build a high cost-performance and trustworthy physical community transaction method based on participation in group buying and the resulting volume changes.
4. Get rid of the noisy, inefficient shopping method and scenario of community group-buying WeChat groups.
5. Build a decentralized social community that enables direct communication and interaction from merchants and supply chain to customers.
This can be compared to Alibaba's current He Shequn, which started with WeChat groups and now directly moved to the app's He Shequn. The biggest advantage of community stores is being close to users; closeness means very convenient access to services, whether for pickup or home delivery.
**Discussion: Do you think future community group buying will move away from WeChat?**
Reprinted with authorization from WeChat public account: Blue Community (linlinshequ100)
-END-


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 白树Shu
- Published: 2018-11-12
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/from-the-current-buzz-of-community-group-buying-to-the-new-e-commerce-an-be46affa/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/XO1OKDr-Q88EZ40QZB8USA

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