Group Buying Enters The Cold Winter: The Year Of Dragon Moves From High Speed To Rational Adjustment

"Begin to be beautiful, the middle of the year is entangled, the ending is cold". Online Group Shopping In recent years, the number of group buying websites in China has jumped to the top of the world. However, due to excessive competition in the market, enterprises generally "burn money" and "lose money and earn money", resulting in the industry reshuffle intensified, and there are more than 1000 small group buying websites concentrated. Bankruptcy The phenomenon. Faced with the chill of the online group buying industry, experts believe that the online group buying industry in the long year will enter a rational adjustment period from the high inflation period.

　　 Group sales website blowout sales reached 10 billion yuan.

Online group buying in 2011 showed a blowout development trend in China. The number of nationwide group purchase websites has climbed to more than 5000, ranking first in the world. According to the statistics of group 800 website, the sales volume of the group buying website in 2011 1-11 months is nearly 9 billion 500 million yuan. Sales volume The breakthrough of billions of achievements has been "firmly established".

"From vertical industry group buying to regional group buying, the group buying industry is a derivative of e-commerce, especially online shopping, but its magic power is no less than that of WEB2.0 and SNS in China." Guo Chenggang, an analyst at BCC Shang Lin Huatong consulting company, thinks that the group buying website has the characteristics of low construction threshold, direct cash flow and more reliance on offline resources, thus enabling a large number of small and medium-sized websites to enter quickly. Transformation To group buying.

Although the online group buying industry is attractive, but in the fierce homogenization competition, some small and medium-sized group buying websites are difficult to continue because of "unable to make ends meet". The industry frequently layoffs, shutting down and other phenomena, and even some websites are rolling up and running away, which encroach on the interests of netizens.

According to the data of the shopping search engine, the website of the group buying website has more than 35% websites that have not been updated for more than 30 days as of the end of November 2011. In November, the number of group buying websites has been updated, the number of websites being revised or closed has been close to 2000. In the three months before and after the Spring Festival, the website of the company has predicted that the collapse of group buying websites, especially during the Spring Festival, will further intensify. At least 70% of group buying websites will be closed or transformed.

Hu Chen, co-founder of the group 800, said that with the intensification of competition and competition among merchants in the core cities, excessive expansion and tight capital chain caused by the decrease in profit margins, some small group buying websites that had difficulty in survival had to make a "break the wrist" decision. A group of last year's scenic group buying stations were poorly managed or transformed or closed directly.

Part of the group buying website from prosperity to decline, "flash in the pan", but also triggered a heated debate among netizens. Netizens "Zhang Jing 812" said, "every day there are a lot of group buying websites close down, like meteors streak across the night sky, and how much of this flash and the final fall is worth our deep thought". Tencent user Chen Qi said, "group buying website has entered the winter rapidly, and more cold, the number of failures is rapidly increasing."

　　 Industry chaos continues to collectively "lose money earn cry".

A large number of group buying websites have closed down group buying business, which to a certain extent highlights the embarrassing situation of "losing money making money" in the current domestic group buying industry. An important reason for the success of the US global Groupon group is that its gross margin can be maintained at around 40%. However, due to fierce competition, the gross profit margin of some websites has dropped to around 5%.

"In the past six months, the market cost has increased by 10 times, the number of employees has increased 10 times, the operating cost has increased 10 times, and the investment amount has increased 10 times." Wang Huiwen, vice president of the US group network, describes the group buying industry. At the same time, many websites, in order to attract users, even at the expense of buying and selling, set a price lower than the base price of the business to attract netizens and sell them for a single loss.

Social networking site Kaixin group outsourced group buying business to F group in September 2011. Happy net CEO Cheng Binghao told reporters that the company initially thought that white collar users had group buying needs, so they launched group buying business, but after doing that, they found that the group buying market had become an area of excessive competition. "Some of the gross profits are not, or all are lost, and the market is huge, this state is not what we expected, so we chose to quit."

"The plight of the current group buying website is actually an inevitable result of a rapid and fierce competition." Hu Chen said that thousands of group buying websites had plundered limited market resources, resulting in the foundation of the group buying market. Coupled with the promotion of capital interest, many large group buying websites continue to carry out huge promotion, making the survival cost of the industry suddenly raised a lot.

At the same time, there are many non-standard practices in some group buying websites, which also cause netizens to criticisms. In 2011, the Consumer Rights Protection Forum in Shenzhen, held in mid December 2011, the sponsor's report on the protection of consumers' rights and interests in online group buying shows that online group buying exposes a variety of problems that infringe on the legitimate rights and interests of consumers. Among them, consumers react strongly, and the top three problems are: exaggerating publicity, actual goods or services are not consistent with website advertising, the services promised by group buying websites are shrunk, returns are difficult, and deliberately delayed refund or refund procedures are extremely complicated. In addition, goods, such as the wrong board, quality defects, fake and shoddy and other phenomena also make consumers complain incessantly.

　　 Shuffling will continue to accelerate the pace of transformation of enterprises.

"Group buying website industry in the year of the rabbit integration, just like in real time staged a magnificent documentary of the universe birth, large group buying station is rapidly rotating to absorb into a larger star, chaos contains order, ups and downs hidden in the natural law of market competition: group buying website is gradually merging, but the energy and value will not shrink significantly, the actual demand of consumers drives the future of the industry." Hu Chen said.

In his view, the number of group buying websites in China has become the top of the world in a year, and there are indeed many loopholes. Vicious competition is also widespread. It takes some time to reflect and sort out the industry. Under such circumstances, it is expected that the domestic group buying industry will return from a period of rapid expansion to a rational adjustment period.

Experts believe that the shuffle of group buying websites in 2012 is taking place and will continue. The process will last at least a year and a half. The collapse of group buying enterprises on the one hand helps to alleviate the excessive competition in the industry, and helps group buying enterprises get rid of the simple price competition and turn to enhance user experience. At present, group buying is concentrated in the second tier cities. It is still on the waiting list for the three or four tier cities, and the three or four line cities are expected to become a new space for the growth of the group buying industry in the future.

At the same time, many group buying websites also realized the high risk and low efficiency of extensive competition, and began to seek new growth mode. The coldness of the capital market to group buying has stimulated the transformation of the industry to a certain extent.

In view of the development status of group buying websites in China, Tian Yuan, vice president of Qijia network, said in an interview with reporters, "for fast growing domestic network group buying enterprises, it is urgent to do well in the year of the dragon and improve consumer confidence. The group buying industry must always have a sense of crisis. It is difficult to create credibility, and it is more difficult to keep it honest. We must not neglect the protection of consumers' rights and interests simply by pursuing economic interests.