Weighs: Do You Really Want To Get Out Of The History Stage?

When the group buying tide swept the world, Wu Bo, the founder of the handshake network and Feng Xiaohai, the founder of the home network, once said that the group buying mode dominated by commodities would not be long-term. The core mode of group buying should be to integrate offline services and online resources.

And a few years later, the main mode of offline service collection line resources is.

But let the traditional sense of group buying die out.

Recently, it was reported that with the merger of the US mission, its demand for group buying merchants became more severe.

Businesses such as catering, massage, pedicure, KTV, nail, hairdressing, club, fitness and so on are all paid by the US group for the amount of 5000 yuan to 20000 yuan / year, and some industries need to bundle thousands of Yuan merchants and promotion fees.

In addition, the US group commented that the proportion of group buying from the above industries increased from 1%-6% before the merger to 10%-15%, and that the proportion of the original group buying to 12%-15% ratio was also raised to 15%-18%.

In response, the US delegation responded that it was "adjusting the normal business after integrating user experience and habits, business interests and industry norms."

"For the individual sales, the" compulsory charging or otherwise off the shelf "situation has always been firmly rejected by the US public comment and there is no mention of the cost.

An American group insider told Tencent science and technology: "for the US group, group buying will become the norm, and the user relationship under the group purchase will be pferred to many O2O sub brands such as the US group takeaway, cat eye movie and so on."

This means that the last heavyweight player in the group buying industry will also gradually abandon this field.

Acceleration of group buying

The story of group buying began in the spring of 2010. In just a few years, group buying has gone through a series of roller coaster development such as capital darling, thousand regiment war, IPO collapse, capital cold winter, layoffs and shutdown, mobile rise and so on.

The group buying channel in the website and even compound group buying and trading platform and other formats coexist.

By the time 2015, group buying industry began to upgrade to the upgrading of O2O concept. The spring breeze of O2O has gone to many segments including catering, takeaway, movies and hotels.

Especially in the catering industry, after the emergence of Baidu takeaway, hungry and other subdivision products in the catering industry, the original group buying mode has a strong impact.

Transformation is inevitable. In 2015, the US group commented on the group buying website and announced the pformation. The main idea is to go group buying.

According to the briefing, the so-called group buying is not completely abandoning group buying business, but group buying mode gradually abdicated as one of the local life service consumption patterns, upgrading the original business to a comprehensive O2O service provider.

In April last year, the public comment was formally launched on the flash function, which was even more consistent with the offline consumer scenario and was even promoted to the height of the company's strategy.

It turns out that flash shopping is more suitable for store consumption than group buying.

Just four months later, Hui Hui helped the review to capture the 33 cities of the country and became the largest market share.

The US group CEO Wang Xing (micro-blog) put forward the "T strategy" many years ago, that is, group buying as a horizontal line, and vertically entered into subdivision areas including film, hotel tourism, takeaway and so on.

In July last year, the US group adjusted the whole organizational structure (including the establishment of takeaway distribution and hotel tourism group, to the business group, the establishment of a wholly owned subsidiary of the cat eye culture media Co., Ltd.) was seen as an important turning point in the development of group buying.

The way that the US group enters the hotel format is mainly booking, and the takeaway business is not the shadow of group buying.

For Baidu Nuomi's O2O business, group buying is only one of them. There are also products such as store, storage card, voucher and so on.

Taking the catering industry as an example, in addition to bringing massive outdoor use to merchants, Baidu Nuomi also provides business services such as online booking, queuing, ordering, takeout and other services, vouchers, value cards, credit payment and other financial services, food supply chain, staff recruitment management and other business services, and provides online and offline members CRM management, big data personalized marketing services and a series of combined punches, with technology O2O as business energy empowerment.

Glutinous rice also released the "membership +" mechanism to accelerate the O2O group buying, and tried to share customer information with merchants, help merchants establish their online membership system, cultivate loyal users, and achieve a win-win situation between businesses and platforms.

In fact, the group buying market has shifted from the crazy years ago to a more rational stage. For consumers, apart from valuing the price advantage, they also hope to meet their needs through many functions of the platform.

The surplus value of group buying

As a product of the PC Internet era, group buying is coming into the twilight under the mobile Internet market environment.

The movement of each platform to buy group is the representation, but the real reason is actually the many disadvantages of group buying.

Group buying is one of the most important reasons why the group buying industry needs to break down.

Zhang Tao, the founder of public comment, once thought so.

Group buying is very harmful to business brand, and as time goes on, businesses hate the group buying more and more strongly. Buying group buying vouchers is usually for the sake of cheap and complex process consumers, which is not sticky and long-term development force for merchants.

Outside the riverside is a businessman who participated in the flash function.

Its general manager, Meng Hongbo (micro-blog), said that roasting whole fish outside the riverside city is already a well-known brand. Every time the peak period of dining, both inside and outside the store are ranked customers. If the group purchase service is provided outside the riverside city, it is bound to buy these original positive price groups into group buying people, thereby damaging the brand profits.

Similarly, this is also one of the reasons why seabed never buys a group.

Fu Haibo, deputy general manager of Baidu Nuomi, thinks that during the period of group buying, everyone is doing explosive sales, special dishes and packages, and all services are customized. On the one hand, the efficiency of platform operation is low, and on the other hand, the long-term interests of merchants will be damaged.

With the advent of shop delivery, stored value cards, vouchers and other new ways, these forms can help users achieve full field consumption, and stored value cards can help platform accumulate members and precipitate brands.

And that's what businesses value more.

Baidu Nuomi's data also prove the correctness of the direction of group buying.

Its head told Tencent science and technology that its data showed that the amount of payment paid by users to "shop to pay" increased rapidly, and the growth rate of the value card payment stream was also very good, while the payment amount of group purchase and voucher was declining.

However, although group buying has basically ended, there is no doubt that group buying is still a good way to attract more users for new businesses and low frequency businesses.

Baidu Nuomi also believes that group buying will still occupy a small proportion in certain industries or categories.

Its head told Tencent technology that on the whole, group buying will be used as a new way to promote sales activities, such as new product recommendation and signature category promotion, so as to attract users and become a special tool for merchants to attract customers, and form O2O combination with other products and services.

4 years ago, the group buying industry showed the speed of development that no industry ever had.

But when the upsurge subsided, the rational emergence and the invasion of O2O giants, the proud flying fish had to accept and had to accept the fate of slowly fading away.