New Regulations Of "Nine No'S" In Community Group Buying

The powerful drug of the regulatory layer was officially distributed to the hot community group buying.

According to Xinhua viewpoint micro blog on the evening of December 22, the General Administration of market supervision and the Ministry of Commerce held an administrative guidance meeting on standardizing the order of group buying in communities, which was attended by six Internet platform enterprises including Ali, Tencent, Jingdong, meituan, pinduoduo and didi.

The meeting required Internet platform enterprises to strictly abide by the "nine no's", involving nine aspects, such as not abusing independent pricing power for vicious price competition, abusing market dominant position, false propaganda and commercial slander, big data "killing", damaging competition order by using technical means, illegally collecting personal information of consumers, and selling fake and inferior commodities.

"We should not abuse the power of independent pricing by means of low-price dumping, price collusion, bid up prices, price fraud and other means." "this is just like a 'timely rain'", "the new regulations are too timely," several e-commerce industry practitioners told the 21st century economic report reporters respectively.

Recently, with the "1 cent grabbing vegetables" community group buying fever, related disputes are also rampant. Some Internet giants have used the "killer's mace" of price war in the past. Relying on the high subsidies from the head side and the user side, some Internet giants try to seize market share and even shuffle the market by "Blitzkrieg".

But such vicious competition is no different from a kind of harm to the industry. Regardless of the impact on the players who are deeply engaged in the industry, even from the perspective of users, it is difficult to attract users only by low-cost subsidies, and the supply chain ability fails to keep up with it. On the contrary, it may lose the user experience and the overall reputation of the industry.

"These nine regulations are of positive significance for the community group buying industry to avoid vicious competition, and at the same time, it also gives a positive export of community group buying." Pan Helin, executive director and professor of Digital Economy Research Institute of Central South University of finance, economics and law, analyzed to the reporter of 21st century economic report.

The powerful drug of the regulatory layer was officially distributed to the hot community group buying. Visual China

Strictly control price war

"There is no upper limit on investment. Try to win the first." This is the bold words of didi founder Cheng Wei when he talked about "orange heart optimization". Orange heart is a community group buying brand launched by Didi. In addition, including meituan, pinduoduo and other community group buying track players, also try to quickly attack the city. In September, meituan launched the "thousand city plan", which will enter 20 provinces in the next three months and continue to infiltrate in each province. The "thousand cities" coverage will be realized within the year, and gradually sink to the county-level market.

It is reported that the peak unit volume of the community group buying platforms of Didi, meituan and pinduoduo has exceeded 10 million in December, among which the daily average unit volume of orange heart optimization under didi exceeded 10 million in December.

The reason why we can quickly seize the market, a very important reason is the low price. On a large number of platforms, the phenomenon of "one penny for a box of eggs" and "nine cents for a cabbage" is quite common.

However, such irrational subsidies may not be beneficial to the industry. In addition to the impact on the surface of the normal price system, the impact on normal players, but also loss of "taste" user experience. Several users told the 21st century economic reporter that the dishes purchased on some platforms were "not very satisfied".

"The dishes are not as much as you can imagine, and the mushrooms are not too fresh, and the radish is too old." A user told the 21st century economic reporter, "I'll buy it myself, and I won't buy it."

"In fact, there are a lot of loopholes in the performance of community group buying." A leading enterprise of community group buying told the 21st century economic report that at present, most of the mainstream community group buying platforms adopt the mode of outsourcing orders to suppliers in the field of fresh food, and the suppliers assume the role of origin procurement. In this process, how to carry out supplier management and quality control determines the final product quality of users.

"The giants who have just entered the market are more focused on the price side, and many of the quality end is left to the suppliers to control themselves," the aforementioned person told the 21st century economic news reporter bluntly. "In this process, the lack of platform management ability will certainly lead to various problems."

As a result, the new regulation of "nine prohibitions" in community group buying is actually a correction to the industry to a certain extent. The strong signal behind it is that the giants can not "reshuffle at a vicious low price", and the industry's attention needs to be shifted.

The restrictions on the giant's "low price reshuffle" strategy, to a certain extent, is conducive to the enterprises whose capital "ammunition" is not enough, but deeply cultivates the industry. "It's good for community group buying startups." Li Chengdong, a former strategic investment analyst of Tencent and Jingdong and founder of dolphin think tank, told the 21st century economic reporter.

Qiu Qiong, vice president of the Research Institute of China international e-commerce center, analyzed to the 21st century economic reporter that the new rules are generally aimed at restraining large platforms from taking some actions that may undermine the normal market competition in order to seize the market, which is conducive to safeguarding the interests of consumers and protecting small and medium-sized businesses.

Return to the nature of the industry

Should the community group purchase of the giant scuffle be shot to death directly? Return to the nature of the industry, not necessarily.

"Previously, the industry has expressed concern about the possible monopoly caused by community group buying, so the" nine Musts "are mainly aimed at monopoly, low-price dumping and other dimensions, and there are many expressions in this area." Pan Helin told the 21st century economic reporter that from the overall expression of the "nine Musts", the regulatory level allows the industry to develop after standardization, which is also in line with the general trend of community retail digitization.

In fact, the relatively new business form of community group buying has obvious industrial value. Otherwise, it will not attract giants to enter the market.

An e-commerce platform executive told the 21st century economic reporter that the community group has gathered near field retail, short chain and high efficiency, forming a pull supply chain different from the current one.

The person analyzed to the reporter that the community is undoubtedly the nearest "field" to consumers. At the same time, the community group purchase is mainly a local supply chain. The time cycle from the warehouse to the warehouse is about 12 hours, which greatly reduces the cost of logistics and warehousing. At the same time, the process of distributing goods to the pick-up point also integrates the scattered orders in the past, so as to reduce the whole performance cost.

In other words, if the mode of "goods and others" was used in the past, community group buying has creatively realized "people and goods" in the way of pre-sale, collection and distribution, which is a really new supply chain logic. The person pointed out.

And such a new mode is also the space for the industry itself to "spit back" and reasonably yield profits to users.

A person from a leading group buying company in the community told the 21st century economic report that the traditional fresh retail business has increased a lot of logistics, warehousing and even marketing costs due to its hierarchical classification and central warehouse transfer. However, after removing the unnecessary costs of the middle layer, the community group buying mode can also achieve 20% - 30% profit margin for consumers even if it does not carry out vicious price subsidies.

It is also based on this, many industry insiders have analyzed to the 21st century economic reporter that compared with the traditional fresh retail terminals, the community group buying will form a certain user circle differentiation. Community group buying ultimately attracts more price sensitive users who pay attention to cost performance, or users who can accept "plan to buy vegetables". Users who pay more attention to experience and pay more attention to spot shopping will still stay in the traditional retail terminal.

However, some people in the industry pointed out that the implementation of the new regulations still needs to be effective. "The vicious competition of the user end is weakened, and the subsidy of the head end will increase." Li Chengdong pointed out to the 21st century economic report that although the new rules clearly forbid direct price war, enterprises can also carry out potential competition by issuing bonds and issuing red packets.

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