JD Tmall benchmarking online supermarket opens a new battlefield of "cat dog war"
Since the first half of the year, the e-commerce industry, which seems to be calm on the surface but is still surging in the undercurrent, finally showed its tail at the beginning of the second half of the year, pointing the battlefield to the supermarket.
On the surface, in the first quarter of the first half of the year, JD and Alibaba respectively made several investments and mergers in different fields. In fact, from the current data, in the first half of the year and even from last year, every merger and acquisition and investment of the two seemed to be inseparable from the "online supermarket", a previously unattractive field.
In July this year, Jiangpan, the newly appointed Vice President of Alibaba Group and General Manager of Tmall Supermarket, made his first public appearance, directly labeling Tmall Supermarket as "Supermarket No.1", which was quickly protested by JD, the "old enemy". Now it seems that Jiangpan's appearance will not only promote Tmall JD, which has been competing in the field of supermarket since last year, under the spotlight, It is also a clarion call for the confrontation between cats and dogs.
Old routine: willful to tear up 1 billion yuan and hit the market
Similar to any previous "cat and dog" war, the old routine of word-of-mouth war, price war and resource station upgrading is also reflected in the market competition for online supermarkets. On July 14 this year, Jiangpan made its first appearance after taking office, announcing strongly that Tmall Global will rapidly grow into the largest online supermarket in China.
As soon as the speech was finished, the old enemy Jingdong made an accusation across the air. A letter titled "A Letter from JD Supermarket Staff to Mr. Jiangpan of Tmall Supermarket" protested the "largest supermarket" proposed by Jiangpan, and discussed with the head of Tmall Supermarket Jiangpan from three dimensions, including the sales scale of Tmall and JD, the distribution coverage of Tmall and JD, and investment promotion cooperation.
After the shouting ended, the two sides entered the price war stage. What is different from the past is that as early as last year, both sides began to hit the market secretly. Jiangpan said that since July last year, Tmall has invested more than 1 billion yuan to subsidize consumption. In the next three years, Tmall will continue to invest heavily and launch the "double 2 billion plan": 2 billion yuan will continue to subsidize consumers, and 2 billion yuan will be used to build supply chains, commodity structures and service upgrades.
Under the pressure of Tmall, the store was incorporated into JD's No.1 store for one and a half months. It was the first time to speak to the media after two years and pointed the finger at Tmall Supermarket. Song Chunlei, senior vice president of the purchase and marketing department of Store 1, announced that she would invest 1 billion yuan in three months to launch a price war to comprehensively benchmark Tmall Supermarket, and said frankly that the goal of Store 1 this year is to quickly get rid of Tmall Supermarket in East China and many markets outside East China, and achieve the sales target of twice that of Tmall Supermarket.
New way of playing: give back to others
In any previous "cat dog" war, Tmall's services in distribution, logistics and other fields have become the primary target of JD. At the same time, the shortcomings of JD's proprietary platform and commodity categories have also made Tmall find a target for counterattack. However, in this online supermarket contest, the onlookers can clearly see that the martial arts accomplishments of both sides have been greatly improved.
Tmall's logistics layout in recent years has undoubtedly stored huge energy for this challenge to JD. According to Jiangpan, at present, Tmall Supermarket has basically realized the distribution system of "arriving on the same day, arriving on the next day", and promises to create services including arriving on the next day, arriving on the same day, arriving half a day, making an appointment for distribution, not delivering on time compensation, door-to-door collection and return, worry free return and exchange, 7-day return and exchange without reason, helping with garbage, carton recycling, etc. in the next year.
In fact, according to the actual measurement of Sina Technology, the distribution of Tmall Supermarket in Beijing can indeed compete with that of Jingdong to achieve the next day delivery and the same day delivery. For different categories of goods, due to different warehouses, the consolidated parcel distribution that JD has failed to achieve at present is basically realized by Tmall.
JD, which is close to the logistics tree, has reached a cooperation with Wal Mart, which is regarded as a great blood supplement in the field of supermarket, while the online supermarket business of No. 1 Store itself has directly realized "complementarity", and directly dominated in East China. In addition, JD invested 4.3 billion yuan in Yonghui Supermarket, a domestic supermarket giant, last year, which is also seen as a boost to the supermarket business, especially the fresh food business.
Although at the moment, the situation of gambling between the two sides has just begun, and the outcome is difficult to determine, compared with the previous duels, the competition for online supermarkets between the two sides is inevitable. It is not only the bright sword of both parties in vertical business, but also of strategic significance for the two groups.
The industry believes that the riverside, which has worked at Wal Mart for 17 years and accumulated rich experience and resources in the supermarket business, will undoubtedly become a strong injection of Ali for Tmall. According to Jiangpan, Zhang Yong, CEO of Alibaba Group, has indeed positioned Tmall Supermarket as the fourth consumer platform after Taobao, Tmall and Juhuasuan, saying frankly that "it is of great strategic significance to Alibaba Group".
In terms of JD, Liu Qiangdong, as well as JD's early investor and President Xu Xin of Today's Capital, regard online supermarket as one of JD's important layouts in the future. Liu Qiangdong believes that JD still has shortcomings in its current operation, and it has failed to let consumers "stroll" through the arrangement and combination of goods, while the category of supermarket has the characteristics of high purchase frequency and strong consumer stickiness, The female users brought here will be able to improve JD's current operation.
