Which is the best among the top ten community group buying platforms?

The strange thing is that when you open the Internet financial headlines, there are a lot of comments about community group buying, but it is difficult to see the real experience of ordinary users on the community group buying platform. But what we really care about is whose service is better and shopping is more comfortable?

So, I spent a week experiencing the five largest community group buying platforms. I thought they were all similar products with the same craftsmanship, so they should all be the same. However, after actual use, I found that the difference between the two is still very big.

It is a fresh food e-commerce company. What's the difference?

Although so-called community group buying belongs to fresh food e-commerce, it is obviously different from Hema Fresh and JD.COM Home Furnishing. It is neither a large offline supermarket with a full range of goods like Hema, nor a same-day express delivery or door-to-door delivery like JD.com. COM's home delivery service adopts the model of ordering on the same day and picking up the goods the next day.

It doesn’t sound convenient enough, and it doesn’t have the traditional Internet speed. So why can community group buying survive a fresh food e-commerce model?

Actually, calm down and think about it. Picking up food within an hour is not the most important requirement for daily grocery shopping, but it is cheap. Cheap and fast money are two opposite things. Therefore, quick community group buying was abandoned, which greatly reduced logistics and distribution costs. Then what we have to do is to directly develop the express delivery stations and street shops all over the community into delivery points and pick-up points. We can continuously attract new customers without adding new bricks and tiles. Goods go directly from suppliers to users, eliminating many intermediate links and further reducing prices.

So the largest community group buying platform in the country can be divided into two categories. One is the community group buying platform that has slowly spread from small places to the whole country under this operating model, namely Prosperity Optimization and the Top Ten Youth League.

The other type is the big Internet companies that have entered halfway. Currently, Meituan Selection, Didi’s Orange Heart Selection, and Pinduoduo’s Duoduo are the fastest-expanding companies in the country. Their characteristic is that although they do not have the user accumulation of previous years, they quickly gain popularity through spending money, promotion, and expansion, and their scale quickly rivals the old players' Shengshi, Optimization, and Shishe.

In fact, Shengxing Youxuan and Shihui Group have also received strategic investments from JD.COM and Alibaba respectively. In other words, the battlefield of community group buying is like the sword of the Internet giants. When it comes to burning money for expansion, no one can cheat. How about the purchasing process, delivery service, food quality, and are returns and after-sales guaranteed? These are the focus of our comparative investigation.

Exclusive discounts for newcomers, Meituan will give priority to refunds.

For most Internet services, there will be a huge discount for the first order, and community group buying platforms are no exception. I compared these five platforms. Except for Prosperity Selection, which does not provide exclusive price discounts for newcomers, the other four platforms have similar promotion methods. Among them, Orange Heart’s first-order discount for newcomers should be the biggest. In addition to the special low prices for newcomers, there are also coupons for 5 yuan off when spending 6 yuan or more, and coupons for 15 yuan back on purchases of 3 yuan or more. The first level is equivalent to a white.

Of course, when I placed an order on these platforms for the first time, I chose the special offer for newcomers, but I didn’t expect that I got stuck on Meituan.

The exclusive discount we chose for new customers on Meituan was 0.99 yuan for a box of ten eggs, but when we were notified the next day to pick up the goods, we found that the platform automatically refunded the price because it was out of stock. What’s even more puzzling is that the same product was still available on the platform the next day, but the price displayed changed to 5.9 yuan/box, with a purchase limit of 2 pieces.

The eggs that Meituan gave priority to refunding due to "out of stock" were still on sale on the platform the next day.

It is not uncommon for the platform to issue automatic refunds due to shortages, but this was my first discount, and being refunded also led to the failure of the first benefit. The person in charge of the shipping point also expressed helplessness and sympathy for my loss, and said that he would report this issue to the platform. At the same time, the delegation leader also told

For community group buying, the pick-up point and group leader play an important role in sales and after-sales, which also determines the entire purchasing process to a large extent. experience.

After placing the order, the logistics department will deliver the goods to the group leader, who is their pick-up point. These pickup points are not exclusive, and a team leader may have joined these five platforms at the same time as their unique pickup point.

Through picking up goods from different group leaders, I found that the conditions of these community group buying pickup points are uneven. There are barber shops, fast food restaurants, dried fruit shops, and even an empty space. Room?

The food storage issues created by these different pickup points are concerning. Among them, the biggest problem is the preferred pick-up point for Ten Clubs and Prosperity. Huituan is a roasted seed shop that sells melon seeds and dried fruits. No refrigerator or freezer. When I went to pick up the goods at around 6 p.m., the frozen meat had already melted and a bag of water was flowing out. It feels like you know. Winter may be okay now, but the temperature will rise soon, and it will indeed be difficult to ensure the safety of meat.

Prosperity is a bit more exaggerated, it means an empty house with no one to look after it. The vegetables you bought are lying quietly in the box, and anyone can go in and get them, let alone store the meat in the refrigerator.

It is best to store goods in the worst possible conditions.

In the early days of community group buying, convenience stores were the main pickup points. For example, Wangyouyou gradually developed from Furongwang, a convenience supermarket chain in the Hunan market.

However, when these local community group buying platforms expand nationwide, it becomes difficult to replicate the local model.

Coupled with the fierce competition among multiple platforms, in order to expand the market first, the function of the team leader has gradually weakened to a launch point. This expanding demand has also resulted in low barriers to entry for pickup points. Basically, as long as you can provide a place to put the goods, you can be the pick-up point and group leader, which leads to the problem of poor pick-up experience.

When the delivery point and person in charge of community group buying have changed from emphasizing quality in the past to quantity today, the commission the person in charge can get is greatly reduced, and then it is difficult to say that the after-sales service is satisfactory. .

The 10th group had no customer service and refused to return the goods.

In the process of seeking after-sales service, I found that the biggest problem is Prosperity Optimization and Shishe. Neither provides online return channels, nor official online customer service. Shengxing Preferred also has a 400 phone number, and Shilian can’t even find a customer service number.

In terms of sales return and exchange policies, community group purchases usually require

Fresh products cannot be returned or exchanged unless there are quality issues, and non-fresh products can be returned without reason. So I deliberately bought some non-fresh products on various platforms, and then applied for a return when picking up the goods.

After comparison, it was found that Meituan Youxuan, Chengxin Youxuan and Duoduo Maicai are more worry-free in returning goods. After applying for a return online, the goods are returned to the group leader, who can immediately pass the review in the background. Then the refund will be credited to your account immediately. Since Xingsheng Youxuan couldn't see the group leader, they could only communicate repeatedly on the phone and slowly wait for confirmation from the group leader. Now I have not received a refund.

The leader of the Shihuituan pick-up point rejected my return request and directly replied that once delivered to the pick-up point, they do not support returns regardless of whether the goods are fresh or not. Since I didn’t see the customer service number of Shihuituan, I basically have no way to appeal.

This time I bought a week’s worth of food on these community group buying platforms. Overall, the experience they gave me was good. For example, the food was really cheap. Basically, I didn’t want to buy it again. Went to supermarkets and vegetable markets.

In general comparison, the performance of Orange Heart Selection and Duoduo are relatively average. Orange Heart Selection is more user-friendly in terms of overall page design and functional layout, and there are enough flash sale discounts, so I like it best. It’s the Orange Heart Selection. However, due to space limitations, I will focus here on the shortcomings and pitfalls of these platforms, and I hope it will be more helpful to everyone.

Although Xingsheng Youxuan and Shihuituan have early accumulation advantages, it has to be said that in terms of after-sales and service, they still lag behind the major Internet manufacturers. When multiple giants enter the market at the same time, everyone faces not only a price war, but also a service war. The established community group buying platform is already in crisis. Is it time for self-innovation?

New entrants Meituan Selection, Orange Heart Selection, and Duoduo Maicai seem to be very determined. For example, Didi CEO Cheng Wei stated that there is no upper limit on investment in Orange Heart Selection; Pinduoduo founder Huang Zheng will personally lead a team to buy vegetables; Meituan Wang Xing said that the battle for fresh food must be won?

Every entrant into community group buying is full of confidence. After a short experience, it is difficult to tell who will survive, because when the models are the same, the competition is actually service. Meituan is the best choice. If the first order discount is used as a routine, or Shihuituan and Xingsheng Youxuan have long-term passed all after-sales responsibilities to the group leader, then no matter how rich their financial resources are, they will eventually be abandoned by consumers. Related Q&A: Related Q&A: Why is Hunan Xingsheng Preferred E-commerce Platform so popular in rural areas, with every village surrounded by them?

Xingsheng Youxuan—the leader in community e-commerce in China, is headquartered in Changsha City, Hunan Province. Hunan Xingsheng Preferred E-Commerce Co., Ltd. is a community e-commerce platform incubated by Hunan's famous chain convenience store brand "Furong Xingsheng". The innovative model thrives by relying on community physical convenience stores. At the same time, it leverages the advantages of its own logistics system, reduces intermediate circulation links, and makes online reservations through the WeChat mini program to form a "pre-sale + self-pickup" model, allowing consumers to enjoy worry-free after-sales and realize Deep integration of online and offline. Serving the majority of community families, it provides community families with a full range of selected products such as fresh fruits, meat, poultry and aquatic products, rice, noodles, grains and oils, and daily necessities to meet the needs of consumers in their daily lives and consumption upgrades. At the same time, Xingsheng Youxuan platform provides 100% after-sales service for the goods sold, and orders can be placed on the same day! Arrival the next day! Improve consumers’ shopping experience. Three major missions: Renaissance stores empower upstream to change consumer lifestyles. Investors: Capital Today, Tencent Investment, Zhen Fund, Furong Xingsheng Jinshajiang Venture Capital, KKR Bell Ding Capital, US, Huaxing Capital, New World Coverage Area Currently, Xingsheng Preferred has covered Hunan, Hubei, 13 provinces and municipalities including Sichuan, Chongqing, Guizhou, Guangdong, Guangxi, Jiangxi, Fujian, Shaanxi, Hebei, Henan and Shandong, as well as more than 500 prefecture (county)-level cities, towns and villages. About 200,000 merchants have joined!

“In Hunan, you can buy things through Xingsheng Youxuan in almost every township, town, and village. If you place an order before 11 o’clock tonight, the goods will arrive at 11 o’clock tomorrow morning.”

< p>Cities and even township markets below the third and fourth tiers are the main frontiers for prosperity.

If we say that with the current e-commerce penetration rate and logistics efficiency, in terms of resource abundance and purchasing experience, the consumer experience in second- and third-tier markets has basically been equal to that of first-tier users, then lower-tier consumers First of all, urban consumers still have a lot of room for expansion in terms of product richness. Therefore, it is more efficient to leverage market access and users through differentiated categories, especially fresh food.

Before this, Furong Xingsheng had been working hard in the market for more than ten years, and the accumulated resources allowed Xingsheng Youxuan to quickly attack and start quickly. According to incomplete statistics, its Furong Xingsheng franchise stores have reached more than 13,000.

The B2B e-commerce module, Xingsheng Abida ordering platform, covers more than 80 prefecture-level cities and more than 200 county-level cities in 16 provinces and cities including Hunan, Guangdong, Hubei, Anhui, and Chongqing.

B2B logistics and distribution service outlets cover five levels of provinces, cities, districts and counties, towns and villages (communities), which also pave the way for the expansion of Xingsheng Youxuan at the logistics supply chain level.