Recently, some media reported that in less than half a year, the number of group buying websites in China has reached 400, and most of them have won the favor of investment banks. With the support of capital, group buying websites are ambitious and aggressively expand their territory. The author believes that the rise of China's group buying websites is, to some extent, a copy of the successful foreign profit model - the American group buying website Groupon is the originator of group buying websites, and its profit model is an innovation in e-commerce. The website only sells one product (or service) every day, attracts a certain number of buyers with daily updates and low prices, and then charges 50% of the transaction commission from the supplier in return.
However, frankly speaking, the rise of China's group buying websites has its inevitable social foundation.
First of all, there is a real demand for group buying websites. Due to the price competitiveness of group buying, this consumption model is favored by consumers. The existence of group buying websites can be said to have moved the consumption patterns that existed in the past to the Internet, and by virtue of the low communication costs and two-way interactivity of the Internet, it has achieved greater market potential than the offline group buying model. At the same time, the American group buying websites The rise has also reduced certain learning costs for China's group buying websites.
Secondly, after Chinese consumers become familiar with e-commerce websites such as Taobao, Dangdang, and Joyo, the proportion of shopping through the Internet has increased significantly. Compared with websites such as Taobao and Dangdang, group buying websites have better experience and interactivity. They are an upgrade from the previous e-commerce model and can attract the attention of Chinese consumers with the selling point of limited sales per day. In addition, group buying websites charge transaction intermediary fees and have clear profit models, which can attract the attention of venture capital.
Thirdly, the rise of social media such as QQ and SNS also allows group buying websites to quickly expand their popularity through word-of-mouth marketing, while the rise of third-party payment can make consumer payments more convenient and relieve consumers of their worries.
Judging from the interfaces of China's current mainstream group buying websites, group buying websites have fully mobilized potential consumers' stickiness in browsing the page through the simplification of the front-end interface, and through the competitive prices and excellent consumption environment of group buying products, they will also cultivate a A consumer group with spending power and loyalty. At the same time, group buying websites can bring consumers together by organizing consumers to jointly consume a service item or consumer product, thereby digging deeper into consumer preferences and improving consumer loyalty through interactions between consumers. . This enables group-buying.com to become an excellent advertising platform in the future, providing value to merchants through targeted and precise matching of consumers and advertisements. Group buying websites have huge potential for future appreciation.
At the same time, we should also see the hidden worries that may exist in the future of group buying websites.
First of all, the intervention of venture capital will inevitably require group buying websites to quickly expand consumption. How to strike a balance between customer experience and sales is a question worth thinking about - maintaining that consumers can get the expected consumer value every time they consume is not An easy thing; secondly, capital power will inevitably require group buying websites to continue to expand to second- and third-tier cities, which will also increase the operating and management costs of group buying websites. Due to the easy duplication of the group buying network model, a lot of problems will inevitably arise. There are still unknown factors in how localized group buying websites and pioneering group buying websites can compete with these localized group buying websites and jointly expand market segments. Finally, as group buying websites grow bigger, they will inevitably face the problem of how to deeply tap consumer resources, and how to compete with social media such as SNS. Media cooperation and proactively seeking to upgrade business models should be a way out.