“`html
CNBC AI News – July 31 – A recent report by LatePost, titled “The Invisible Convenience Stores: Meituan and Taobao’s Instant Retail Battle,” delves into the intensifying competition within China’s on-demand delivery sector.
Beyond the highly publicized subsidy wars, the race for crucial resources is heating up, and “lightning warehouses” (闪电仓) have emerged as a key battleground.
These “lightning warehouses” represent a new iteration of convenience retail, distinct from traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Typically lacking a street-facing storefront, they occupy spaces of a few hundred square meters.
Stepping inside, one finds neatly arranged shelves packed with a diverse inventory of 2,000 to 5,000 SKUs.
These items cater to the immediate needs of nearby residents, spanning food and beverages to household essentials. Essentially, lightning warehouses function as online-only hyper-convenience stores, leveraging wide product selections and rapid delivery to satisfy on-demand consumer demands.
In a bid to gain a competitive edge and capture leading lightning warehouse merchants, front-line teams from Taobao’s flash sale division and Meituan have been engaged in intense battles since the subsidy wars began in July.
Reports indicate that on the evening of July 5th, select top-tier lightning warehouse operators received instructions from one platform to increase minimum order values or even temporarily suspend operations on a rival platform.
These tactics escalated during subsequent peak sales weekends.
In at least the South China region, platforms reportedly stationed personnel at the headquarters of leading merchants to closely monitor order volumes on competing platforms.
Should a competitor’s order volume surge, the platform would immediately pressure the merchant to take action, such as raising minimum order values or delivery fees, in an attempt to stifle the rival’s momentum.
The other platform quickly responded, offering more lucrative incentives and commission structures to key merchants to maintain their loyalty.
Critically, on peak sales days, this platform even locked some merchants’ backend systems, preventing them from adjusting prices.
This provided merchants with a plausible alibi when facing requests from the opposing platform: “It’s not that we’re unwilling to cooperate; the other platform has locked our backend.”
The sentiments of the merchants themselves are noteworthy. A founder of a cosmetics-focused lightning warehouse reportedly stated, “Of course, we’d prefer to have a platform with comparable strength. A monopoly is dangerous. The platform controls all the data from our stores, and if they decide to enter the market themselves, what are we supposed to do?”
This shadow war between Meituan and Taobao in the instant retail space, centered on lightning warehouses, not only reflects the intense competition within the broader on-demand delivery landscape but also underscores the complex position of merchants caught in the crossfire of platform rivalries.
The future trajectory of this competition and the evolving role of the merchants warrant continued observation.
“`
Original article, Author: Tobias. If you wish to reprint this article, please indicate the source:https://aicnbc.com/6083.html
