To directly experience community group buying products and services, several editors from Community Group Buying Watch went undercover in various community groups starting late last year, staying for over 100 days. Recently, we reviewed this undercover operation and would like to share our findings and feelings with you. 01 No Social Interaction in Community Groups Contrary to what many outsiders might imagine, community groups actually have no social interaction. The neighborly social interaction of "chickens and dogs hearing each other" is one of the biggest differences between rural and urban life. In urban residential buildings, neighbors who hear each other's chickens and dogs are mostly not acquaintances and have no opportunity for social interaction. The emergence of community groups seems to offer a possibility: beyond chance encounters in the neighborhood or elevator, there is suddenly a shared space in a WeChat group. Could people with different life and work trajectories find common ground because they bought the same products from the same company? If you think that, you are overthinking it. There is simply no social interaction in community groups. Most community groups quickly become "robot groups" or "dead groups." The group quickly degenerates from a social platform to a community broadcast, with only the group leader posting purchase information. Member activity becomes a chicken-and-egg paradox: if the group is active, members are more likely to speak up; if members speak up, the group becomes active. Unfortunately, the group gradually falls silent. Those who were willing to speak stop doing so when they get no response, further accelerating the group's demise. 02 Showing Orders Is Indispensable If your community group has become a robot group, showing orders becomes the only salvation to prevent the group from completely dying. Showing orders has two major functions: First, members' act of showing orders in the group is itself a form of participation and interaction; second, showing orders directly leads to word-of-mouth, encouraging other members to place orders. 03 Group Leaders Are Not Loyal Group leaders are not loyal; if they are loyal to anything, it is to products, orders, and their own performance, never to a specific group buying company. All group buying companies claim that their group leaders are stable and loyal, saying things like "my group leaders cannot be poached." Indeed, group leaders are not poached; they leave on their own. Individual group leader loyalty is not guaranteed; what can be pursued is the overall retention rate of group leaders: By continuously recruiting new leaders and eliminating underperformers, the total number of group leaders can maintain a relatively stable growth. Group leaders have many ways to be disloyal, such as creating second and third groups (A/B groups) outside the main community group. Their disloyalty is blatant, such as directly promoting products from multiple companies in the same community group. The core logic is "landlord mentality": The land is mine, and I can plant whatever I want. What community group buying companies can do is provide these "landlords" with better seeds and fertilizers, help them improve harvests, and reduce rent or "never increase taxes" (do not easily raise profit margins or charge arbitrary franchise fees). 04 Community Group Buying Is Truly Cheap, and Consumers Will Compare Prices Consumers are as shrewd as group leaders. Group leaders look at who earns them more, while consumers look at who costs them less. Take the same Dandong 99 strawberries as an example: some group buying channels can sell them at 15 yuan per 350 grams, while other online channels may sell at 28 or 30 yuan per 350 grams. You may have a hundred professional reasons to explain this, but consumers can simply ignore them all. All opportunities to earn excess profits through information asymmetry will be compressed on the internet, and under social relationship networks, this impermanence will accelerate further. 05 Anyone Can Steal Business Social e-commerce with commission models is the most direct "disruptor" for community group buying. They can easily "steal" the traffic of community group buying groups with a simple gesture. Commission-based distribution directly targets private domain social traffic. After community group buying helps group leaders reorganize and expand their private domain traffic, group leaders find it hard to resist the temptation of "one-click forwarding" lazy money-making methods of commission-based social e-commerce, especially when it has designs like locking in followers. 06 Property Management and Owners Are Not Natural Enemies Within the visible scope of our undercover operation, groups where property management serves as group leader or admin are the most active. Community groups initiated by property management naturally have many more topics than those initiated by residents: public facility repairs, property service calls, etc. Do not underestimate the extra content; for groups heading toward death, these interactions are lifesaving. The hostile emotions between property management and owners in face-to-face or private interactions are subconsciously restrained in the relatively open semi-closed environment of online WeChat groups: The arrogance of property management in offices and service windows is easily replaced by the friendly customer service language of Taobao sellers and the mindset that "the customer is God." Similar to property management are package collection points. In fact, the number of courier bosses doing community group buying may exceed most people's imagination. 07 De-Leaderization In the community group buying model, group leaders, companies, and consumers jointly distribute the saved profits, and they both achieve mutual success and engage in mutual game-playing. While group leaders try every means to maximize traffic monetization and guard their traffic sovereignty, both companies and consumers are spontaneously de-leaderizing. Consumers' de-leaderization is reflected in the shortening path to the platform; for them, the group leader's role may later become merely a pickup point. Companies' de-leaderization at this stage still manifests as "making it easier for group leaders to earn more money." Source: Community Group Buying Watch (ID: sqtggc) -END-