---
title: "Meituan Youxuan Renames 'Community Group Buying' to 'Community E-commerce'"
description: "At the start of the new year, Meituan Youxuan made a major move. On January 1, 2021, Meituan Youxuan issued a notice to internal employees, officially naming its business model 'Community E-commerce' and stipulating that from 2021, employees must not use other terms like 'Community Group Buying' when describing the business model. At the same time, Meituan Tuanjieshe was also renamed to Meituan Quanquan. On the surface, Meituan seems to have abandoned community group buying in favor of community e-commerce, but in essence, both are regional community e-commerce. The..."
author: "New Distribution"
publisher: "New Distribution"
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published: "2021-01-19"
language: "en"
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---

# Meituan Youxuan Renames 'Community Group Buying' to 'Community E-commerce'

> At the start of the new year, Meituan Youxuan made a major move. On January 1, 2021, Meituan Youxuan issued a notice to internal employees, officially naming its business model 'Community E-commerce' and stipulating that from 2021, employees must not use other terms like 'Community Group Buying' when describing the business model. At the same time, Meituan Tuanjieshe was also renamed to Meituan Quanquan. On the surface, Meituan seems to have abandoned community group buying in favor of community e-commerce, but in essence, both are regional community e-commerce. The...

At the start of the new year, Meituan Youxuan made another major move.
On January 1, 2021, Meituan Youxuan issued a notice to internal employees, officially naming its business model 'Community E-commerce' and stipulating that from 2021, employees must not use other terms like 'Community Group Buying' when describing the business model. At the same time, Meituan Tuanjieshe was also renamed to Meituan Quanquan. On the surface, Meituan seems to have abandoned community group buying in favor of community e-commerce, but in essence, both are regional community e-commerce.
This business model was formally established, and some internal employees of Meituan Youxuan defined it as a 'landmark event.'
According to multiple internal employees of Meituan Youxuan, before this, there was no unified description of Meituan Youxuan's business model within Meituan, and the company had never formally defined the business model. 'Generally, internal employees summarized Meituan Youxuan as a community group buying business.'
However, a former employee who participated in the preparation of Meituan Youxuan revealed: 'In the early development stage, Meituan Youxuan focused on benchmarking the community group buying model of Xingsheng Youxuan.'
In response, a core management figure from a leading community group buying platform analyzed, 'Meituan Youxuan's decision to define its business model as community e-commerce rather than community group buying may signal that Meituan Youxuan will focus on developing e-commerce in the future, evolving into a new form of community group buying.'
**-01- Renaming to Community E-commerce: Not Just About 'Selling Vegetables'**
Following Pinduoduo's announcement in 2020 that Duoduo Maicai was not a community group buying business, in 2021, about half a year after Meituan Youxuan launched its cities, Meituan once again demonstrated a business model iteration.
On July 7, 2020, Meituan announced its official entry into the community group buying market, establishing the 'Youxuan Business Unit' and launching the 'Meituan Youxuan' platform targeting lower-tier markets. Meituan also stated that it hoped to further explore the community fresh food retail format through this business, promoting the accelerated integration of online and offline fresh food retail.
**At this point, Meituan formed a 'three-legged' fresh food retail matrix: 'Meituan Maicai' focusing on super first-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen; 'Caid aquan' focusing on quasi-first-tier or second- and third-tier cities; and 'Meituan Youxuan' targeting lower-tier markets.**
It is worth noting that the community group buying business is not entirely equivalent to fresh food retail.
Currently, community group buying products focus on fresh food and other high-frequency, essential items as bestsellers. However, they also sell daily necessities and other standard products, using the user habits cultivated by fresh food to drive low-frequency consumption with high-frequency products, achieving business iteration or profitability.
'Not only Meituan Youxuan, but the community group buying businesses of other internet giants also have a certain gap from the fresh food e-commerce model,' said a senior retail industry insider. He believes that the vegetable-selling business requires a huge agricultural industry and supply chain system support, but none of the community group buying platforms under various internet companies have achieved this yet, and fresh food is not the main category of listed products. Instead, they focus more on operational skills and platform traffic acquisition.
Regarding the scramble among many giants for community group buying business, the aforementioned industry insider pointed out that fresh food e-commerce was already tested in the first wave of vertical B2C boom a few years ago, all ending in failure. Therefore, although fresh food categories have characteristics, it is not easy to develop them into a standalone vertical e-commerce platform. **Now, internet giants are spending heavily to compete in community group buying, not mainly to develop the vertical field of fresh food e-commerce, but to use the vegetable-selling business to compete for new traffic entrances such as consumer groups in lower-tier markets.**
Chen Liang, head of Meituan Youxuan, also released similar information. When Meituan Youxuan was established in July 2020, Chen Liang publicly stated that the grocery retail industry is still in the early stage of rapid development and change, and Meituan Youxuan will continue to explore and update its business model. This information may reveal that Meituan Youxuan actually hopes to enter the grocery e-commerce retail field rather than the fresh food field.
**-02- Opening 6 Provinces in 8 Days, Accelerating the 'Thousand Cities Plan'**
On October 23, Meituan Youxuan launched 'opening groups' in Fuzhou, Fujian. Recently, Meituan Youxuan opened 6 provinces in 8 days, 'lighting up' the provincial capitals of Shaanxi, Henan, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hebei, and Fujian, accelerating the 'Thousand Cities Plan.' Among them, Zhengzhou, which launched only 5 days ago, has already exceeded 100,000 daily sales. Since the establishment of the 'Youxuan Business Unit' in July, within just 3 months, Meituan Youxuan has covered 12 key provinces in East China, Central China, South China, Southwest, Northwest, and North China.
'The previously set goal of 20 provinces has been more than half completed. Next, we will further accelerate province openings and market penetration, build sales and logistics networks in various provinces and cities, and refine internal operations and customer service mechanisms,' said a relevant person in charge of Meituan Youxuan. 'The fresh food retail business chain is long and complex, and no link can be achieved overnight. It requires long-term, firm investment to do well.'
According to a source, 'Community group buying is a business that Meituan must succeed in. It will provide full support in resources and is prepared for a protracted war.'
With strong resource support, in 2020, Meituan Youxuan completed the 'Thousand Cities Plan' and the annual goals set in October 2020, including a national daily GMV of 200 million yuan and 20 million national daily orders. An insider close to Meituan revealed that the early city-opening business of Meituan Youxuan has basically ended, and it has entered a new development stage. In 2021, its business focus will be mainly on the operational side.
**-03- Entering a Protracted War, Focusing on E-commerce Development**
Grocery > Fresh food, Community E-commerce > Community Group Buying. Although only a few words differ, behind them lie fundamental differences in innovative models.
An analyst familiar with the community group buying field believes that the current 'pre-sale + self-pickup' community group buying model implemented in the fresh food category is a preliminary form of grocery e-commerce. In the future, it may develop into a mature business model with 'fresh food + FMCG' as the main categories and 'pre-sale + self-pickup' as the core fulfillment form.
Grocery e-commerce is also expected to become an important part of comprehensive e-commerce. Regarding the applicable scenarios of the two business models of community group buying and community e-commerce, a founder of a medium-sized community group buying platform believes that the community group buying business done by internet giants is actually more inclined to community e-commerce. It mainly uses e-commerce thinking to serve consumer-side scenarios; while the community group buying model is mainly for regional platforms, using the logic of bestsellers to drive traffic, mainly serving group leaders and other B-end groups.
Regarding the event of Meituan Youxuan defining its business model as community e-commerce, industry insiders mainly have two views.
**The first view is that Meituan Youxuan wants to break away from the labels of 'low price' and 'focus on fresh food' associated with community group buying, expand to all categories including fresh food, FMCG, daily necessities, clothing, and electronic products, and ultimately evolve into a community-centered comprehensive e-commerce platform.**
**The second view is that at the end of 2020, the government introduced the 'Nine No's' policy for community group buying, and the regulatory environment has become increasingly strict. Meituan Youxuan may change its community group buying business model to reduce the risk of violating government policies.**
Currently, competition in the community e-commerce industry can be divided into two stages: the first stage is a speed war, requiring rapid city openings, quick market occupation, and establishment of supply and marketing systems; the second stage is an operational war, which is a protracted war, with its core in supply chain management, that is, efficient product selection + mature warehousing and distribution systems. **'Meituan Youxuan is now in the second stage,' an internal Meituan employee said bluntly.**
A person in charge of a well-known investment institution that has long focused on community e-commerce believes that community group buying platforms like Meituan Youxuan may eventually evolve into 3 million to 5 million 'Cainiao Stations,' mainly serving as a combination of wholesale logistics and retail logistics.
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