Is it really a false proposition that local life aims at promoting products?

Meituan’s latest “Local Food” feature is regarded as the takeaway version of Xiaohongshu, which aims to provide users with food guides through user-generated content (UGC). In this article, we will analyze whether “Local Food” can bring new vitality and possibilities to the local life service market.

Recently, Meituan is testing a new service, "Local Food", which has attracted the attention of netizens. Meituan has cleverly embedded this service into its food delivery system, turning it into a food delivery version of Xiaohongshu.

Meituan has never stopped exploring the content track. It started live streaming of the kitchen in 2016, built a live streaming team in 2020, and launched the "Meituan Mlive Live Streaming" applet. In the same year, it directly tested the short video function within the APP, focusing on "making money by watching videos". However, due to insufficient resources, few content creators, platform barriers and other limitations, it did not make much splash.

So what kind of surprises and changes will “eating local” bring?

01 Providing food guides to takeaway users through seeding

Initially, Meituan’s business model was group buying, providing users with various preferential services in the form of group buying.

As its business develops, Meituan continues to expand into new service areas. One of them is Meituan’s new “Local Eating” service, which is embedded in the food delivery platform and positioned as a food delivery version of Xiaohongshu.

As can be seen from the picture below, "Local Eating" has an independent and obvious entrance in the Meituan App, alongside services such as Pinhaofan and running errands.

Image from Meituan Merchant

In the past, when we chose takeout, we were often limited to a few familiar stores or placed orders based on simple recommendations from the platform. But with the "Local Eats" service, users can see various well-received takeout orders shared by other users.

Taking Beijing as an example, users can enter the "Local Eating" interface to see recommendations and recommended topics from other users. The users seen here are the takeaway recommendation officers selected by Meituan, and the recommended topics are mainly generated based on some currently popular content.

In addition to content posted by other users and recommended topics, the "Local Food" interface will prioritize the recommended content near the user. After the user clicks "Buy these products", the recommended content page will jump to the takeaway ordering page and add related products to the shopping cart, making it easier for users to place orders quickly.

In this case, users can not only record their own food experiences, but to a certain extent, other users' sharing and comments also reduce the individual's choice costs.

In the past, after enjoying takeaway food, users might simply post pictures on their Moments or verbally recommend it to friends. But now, with "Local Eats", users can share in detail the well-received takeaway orders they have purchased, just like on Xiaohongshu.

It provides users with a real and reliable reference. Everyone has different tastes, and their evaluation of food varies from person to person. The sharing on "Local Eats" is based on users' actual dining experience, without excessive commercial packaging. When we choose takeout, we can read other users' reviews and sharing to understand the true situation of the dishes in terms of taste, quantity, packaging, etc., so as to make a choice that better suits our needs.

Image from Meituan Merchant

02 Another attempt at AI and community

At the same time, Clour observed that the "Local Eating" service also added an "AI Helps You Write" function. After the user enters a short copy, the function will generate a specific dining experience based on the order content.

This makes filling out reviews for "Local Eating" no longer a time-consuming and laborious process. Users do not need to have professional writing skills to write order content, they just need to sincerely share their dining experience.

Image from Meituan Merchant

The time cost and difficulty of evaluation are reduced, and more users are willing to participate and share their food discoveries.

At the same time, the platform has also set up an incentive model for user creations. If a product is bought a certain number of times, you can get a takeaway red envelope reward. For example, if the product is bought by other users 2, 4, and 8 times in the same month, you can get a corresponding no-threshold takeaway red envelope, which is similar to a commission for bringing goods.

This incentive model can not only stimulate user enthusiasm and enable users to actively participate and share, but also increase user engagement and stickiness, bringing more high-quality content and user traffic to the platform.

There are also many food KOLs who may appear on the platform. With their professional knowledge and rich experience, they recommend various high-quality takeaway foods to users and lead the new trend of takeaway.

On this platform, merchants' food delivery products can get more exposure. When users share favorable food delivery orders, they are actually doing free advertising for the merchants. High-quality merchants and food have the opportunity to be discovered by more people, thereby gaining more orders.

This is undoubtedly a timely help for high-quality businesses that lack publicity channels.

03 Whether it can bring new possibilities to local life remains to be seen

There are many young consumers in first-tier cities such as Shanghai and Beijing, who are more receptive to new things and have a large demand for takeout. These users also have a stronger demand for online social interaction and sharing. Therefore, the target population of Meituan’s “Local Eating” service is mainly concentrated in first- and second-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.

Meituan launched the "Local Eating" service this time, precisely because it saw the market potential of content seeding. By creating a takeaway version of "Little Red Book", Meituan not only provides users with a new dining experience, but also brings more traffic and sales opportunities to merchants.

This also reflects a trend in the current market. Nowadays, socialization and content have become important directions for the development of the Internet.

But as a new service, although Meituan occupies an important position in the local life field, it is still not performing well enough in the current highly competitive environment.

In April last year, Xiaohongshu officially announced its entry into the local lifestyle market, first deploying in high-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, focusing on promoting quality lifestyle products such as coffee and tea that young people love. Its "first plant grass, then go to the store" model is also well-liked by users. Xiaohongshu, which focuses on planting grass and lifestyle, has gradually embarked on a differentiated path of local lifestyle development.

Amap, relying on its advantages in navigation and location services, has entered the field of local life, providing users with information and navigation services such as nearby restaurants and entertainment, making it easier for users to find their destinations quickly. The special services of these platforms have diverted Meituan's users to a certain extent.

Image from Amap

On the other hand, Meituan does not have the huge user traffic and powerful algorithm recommendation capabilities like short video platforms such as Douyin, and cannot quickly push information about local life services to a large number of potential users.

For example, videos of influencers exploring stores and videos of merchants promoting products on Douyin can attract users’ attention and stimulate their desire to consume. In contrast, Meituan’s traffic acquisition mainly relies on traditional search and recommendation methods, which may be slightly inferior in terms of traffic scale and accuracy.

In terms of user experience, its APP interface is relatively complex, the operation is not convenient enough, and the after-sales service needs to be strengthened, which will greatly affect user satisfaction and trust.

In terms of merchant cooperation, Meituan charges merchants high commissions and promotion fees, which increases the burden on small merchants. At the same time, merchant management is not detailed enough, and qualification review and service quality supervision are not in place.

As consumer demands continue to change, new consumption trends such as social consumption and experiential consumption continue to emerge. Meituan needs to keep pace with the times in grasping these new consumption trends, launch corresponding services and products in a timely manner, and make its local life part more powerful than other software in the fiercely competitive local life service market, giving full play to the advantages of "local eating" services.