Title image**: IC
Reporter丨Zhou Xinyue Editor丨Jiang Yuying.
The key business changed its commander, and Meituan sounded the clarion call for change.
At the beginning of February, the founder Wang Xing issued an internal letterAnnounced a number of business integrations and personnel transfers
The internal letter is concise and to the point. The most noteworthy thing is that Zhang Chuan, the original helmsman of the store business, led the team to hand over power after 6 years.
At the moment, this is Wang Xing's core business, surrounded by strong enemies.
In January, Meituan's share price hit two new lows. As of the 7th**, the market value was HK$426.2 billion, or about RMB 400 billion, which has evaporated more than 2 trillion yuan from its peak.
Douyin has entered, changes have been made, and Wang Xing is also changing people and playing methods.
Encounter a strong enemy
The opponent is too strong, what should we do? The talents of the two platforms are different, how should we win a long-term war? In January, Zhang Chuan, then president of Meituan's in-store business group, issued an internal letter.
In the 4,200-word letter, the "battle" appears no less than ten times.
Zhang's New Year's message in previous years was mostly based on cheering and encouragement, and rarely involved actual business, but this year he rarely talked about more business ideas.
In particular, Meituan's profit cows, in-store business.
In the first quarter of 2022, Meituan last disclosed data for the business separately, at that time, its operating margin was 456, compared to only 6 in the food delivery business5%。
Douyin comprehensively promotes local life, and the Meituan decision-makers led by Wang Xing are very jealousand set up a special defense project team.
Every time an opponent enters the life service, it starts from the arrival of the store. Zhang Chuan bluntly said that Douyin came to the store to impact Meituan.
According to Haitong International Research Report, in 2023, Douyin's local life GTV (total transaction value) will reach 200 billion yuan, which is about Meituan 1 3, and the vast majority of it will be completed by in-store business.
In the past, the barriers to the store were pushed locally, but after years of market cultivation, the offline supply system has been relatively stable.
Zhang Chuan takes "shelf + low price" as a breakthrough in the future, "this is the opportunity point for the second take-off in the store".
Over the past year, one of his priorities has been "more merchants and better products" to strengthen the capture of low-priced users.
For example, the online "** reporter noticed that in the upper left corner of the page, eye-catching words such as "10 billion subsidies" and "live sale" were played.
Zhang Chuan changed the business assessment criteria of the in-store team from "the number of newly signed merchants" to communicate with merchants to set prices more actively.
**It must be the same or lower than Douyin, otherwise it will be throttled。Zhu Zhu, the owner of Wuhan B&B, told 21CBR that for some "close" businesses, Meituan requires one of the two to choose, or it must be lower than the price of Douyin.
For some F&B businesses that offer lower**, Meituan has lowered the service fee rate from 8% to 4%, and some companies have even waived it altogether, charging only the basic service fee.
In the third quarter of last year, the growth rate of commission income slowed down, from 47% to 31%, sales and marketing expenses reached 16.9 billion yuan, and the marketing expense ratio was 221%, the highest in seven quarters.
burned a lot of money, Zhang Chuan helped Wang Xing stabilize the position of the store business.
The transaction volume of the in-store, hotel and travel business increased by more than 90% year-on-year in the quarter, and the number of active merchants increased by more than 50% year-on-year.
Small-scale live broadcast
Zhang Chuan's last public appearance was at the launch of the "Black Pearl Guide" in late January.
In 2018, he led the team to launch the "Black Pearl List", which established an evaluation system with a higher voice in addition to takeaway and reviews to the store.
Zhang Chuan has 15 years of experience in the Internet industry, and Wang Xing commented that he has rich successful experience in Internet product technology, commercial product design, and business system construction.
After joining Meituan in 2017, he quickly built up the local business infrastructure, including enriching the supply of merchants and improving the level of industry standardization.
Wang Xing and others saw that the platform was "different in talent" and tried to make up for it.
Douyin belongs to interest e-commerce, users spend time on the app, based on short** and live broadcast planting, and place an order for the in-store products they are interested in; Meituan's users have a strong purpose, and the gap lies in the lack of high-quality content to attract users.
At the beginning of last year, Meituan set up live streaming as a strategic project and established a live streaming platform that can be called by all businesses.
Meituan's operation of shelves is based on the logic of 'people looking for goods'The live broadcast system complements the logic of 'goods looking for people'
The relevant person in charge of Meituan told "21CBR" that with the help of live broadcasting, the transaction volume of in-store business hit a new high in August last year, and the transaction volume of many live broadcast rooms exceeded 100 million yuan during the Qixi Festival.
Zhang Chuan set up a low-cost "explosive group live broadcast room" for the in-store business, that is, Meituan provides discounted goods and sales channels, and the service provider is responsible for scene construction and live broadcast, and collects commissions according to the actual verification amount.
Merchants no longer emphasize applying for accounts on their own and live streaming in stores, which solves the problems of poor conversion due to lack of traffic support.
We just need to provide the goods to Meituan. Zhuzhu told reporters that several homestays in her hands will come up with a room type to participate in Meituan's live broadcast, "The write-off rate is quite high." ”
As of December last year, Meituan has been in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Jinan and other countries21 cities are recruiting pilot broadcast service providers
Zhang Chuan's team has established a system of "official live broadcast + merchant self-broadcast + talent live broadcast" to meet the different needs of chains, small and medium-sized businesses, etc., and launched a short ** to recruit experts to visit stores and share low-cost products.
Ready to fly
Zhang Chuan's biggest credit is to keep his share. A Meituan insider told 21CBR that Zhang is good at commercial product design and system construction.
In this round of adjustments, Wang Xing will continue to be in charge of Dianping, and take over SaaS, cycling, power bank and other businesses; The original Daojia business group, in-store business group, Meituan platform, basic R&D, etc. will be integrated and managed by Wang Puzhong.
Wang Puzhong, born in 1984, was formerly the head of Meituan's Daojia business group and senior vice president of the group.
Among the Meituan S-team (Supreme Decision-making Committee) led by Wang Xing, Wang Pu, 40, is the youngest and the only core manager of Meituan who has come from the front line of business.
Since joining Meituan in 2015, Wang has served as Senior Product Director of Food Delivery, Head of Food Delivery and Delivery Division, where he has led several key decisions.
He led the Meituan takeaway team to expand from catering to instant retail, and the Daojia business group incubated star businesses such as errands, flash sales, buying medicine, and fighting good meals.
Taking Meituan Pharmaceutical as an example, Wang Puzhong only took 10 months to achieve the first echelon of drug retail scale in the industry.
Home delivery and store delivery are different business logics that are actually related, and mergers are (for the sake of) user experience and business competition. Li Chengdong, founder of Dolphin Think Tank, said.
*It has a high degree of overlap with takeaway in terms of supplyIt is to meet the same needs of consumers in different ways of fulfillmentAfter this adjustment, it is conducive to coordinated operations.
Zhang Chuan once pointed out in an internal letter that the problems to be solved in the store business.
For example, the in-store team has been living comfortably for too long, and in the face of the attack of Douyin's local life, front-line sales can only "use subsidies" and "use customer favors" to resist.
There are also no shortage of organizational problems.
For example, if you like to write and read articles, like to do reporting projects instead of emphasizing results, the management has been away from the front line for too long, and does not understand the changes in the business, resulting in the sales, operation and reporting system of the in-store business, which is not suitable for the competition with Douyin local life.
As a typical professional manager, Zhang Chuan is more suitable for defending cities than besieging them. "There are professional reviews.
Shaozhuang sent Wang Puzhong to take on the important task of Wang Xing's "siege general".