Meituan plans to develop short videos, copying TikTok's homework?

In an era where short videos are prevalent in people's lives, short videos undoubtedly play an important role. As a supplement to the role of a "tool", they can help merchants better improve the conversion rate of goods. As we are familiar with Meituan, it has also begun to enter the field of short videos. What is the development history of Meituan's short videos? Let's take a look.

While TikTok's local life business was making great strides, Meituan also made rapid progress in the short video field and launched a strategic counterattack against TikTok.

In December 2022, Meituan launched the "Circle Store Exploration" mini program, which not only encourages Douyin influencers to sign up, but also encourages influencers to send their creative content to platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Weibo, and Dianping. This move is naturally to help Meituan merchants attract traffic.

Why has Meituan been testing the waters in the short video field when it clearly follows the business principle of "people looking for goods"? Essentially, Meituan's efforts in short videos are nothing more than to ease the competitive pressure brought by Douyin.

According to the "2022 Douyin Life Service Data Report", the number of Douyin local life merchants has increased 22 times, the number of cooperative stores has exceeded 1 million, and the overall transaction amount has increased by more than 30 times year-on-year, covering more than 370 cities.

When the content-oriented TikTok began to embed group-buying links in videos, Meituan naturally couldn't sit still. However, Meituan had no short video genes in terms of products or organization, and many previous attempts ended in failure.

At present, Quanquan Store Exploration has only deployed its business in Changsha. At the beginning, there were two or three stores joining, but now there is only one store left. Its development effect is not satisfactory. If Quanquan Store Exploration fails, Meituan’s development in the short video field may come to an end.

1. Meituan can’t let go of short videos

It is probably most appropriate to describe the development of Meituan's short video as "fighting again and again after repeated failures". As early as 2020, Meituan launched the "Meituan Mlive Live" applet, which mainly relies on merchants' self-broadcasting, and the products launched are group-purchased goods. In the early days of "Meituan Mlive Live", most of the merchants settled in were medical beauty, education and other related stores, and users could also buy many discounted products in the live broadcast room.

However, perhaps because it was Meituan’s first foray into the live broadcasting field, it lacked operational experience, and its medical beauty and education audiences were relatively narrow. As a result of these factors, the “Meituan Mlive Live Broadcasting” mini program has only had a maximum of more than 10,000 viewers, and the total number of viewers in multiple live broadcast rooms was only a few hundred. It can be seen that this business has not made any splash.

However, Meituan's short video journey has not stopped. On December 27, 2021, in order to make up for its own shortcomings in short videos, Meituan reached a strategic interconnection cooperation with Kuaishou. After that, Kuaishou officially launched the Meituan mini program, with catering merchants taking the lead. Kuaishou also provided Meituan merchants with package meals and vouchers, and helped merchants improve online transactions and after-sales services.

From the perspective of a community of interests, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The cooperation between Meituan and Kuaishou is nothing more than a joint fight against Douyin. This cooperation seems to be a win-win move for both parties. After all, Kuaishou needs Meituan to provide merchants in the local life field, and Meituan also needs Kuaishou's traffic support.

After Kuaishou started to develop local life services in 2020, it launched special group purchases, list recommendations, and launched "Eat, Drink, Play, and Have Fun on Kuaishou" on WeChat. However, since Kuaishou's local life services have just started, its operating system is not mature enough, and it has not yet occupied too much of the user's mind, and there are few merchants entering the market, Meituan just made up for this shortcoming for Kuaishou.

Meituan, unwilling to accept its repeated failures in the short video field, took a series of actions not long after. In April 2022, Meituan launched the "Meituan Live Assistant" APP, which is a free live broadcast tool provided by Meituan for merchants and influencers. Compared with "Meituan Mlive Live", "Meituan Live Assistant" has more complete functions and has also expanded new live broadcast categories.

Admittedly, the speed of Meituan’s live broadcast function upgrade is visible to the naked eye, but the effect is always mediocre. The current app store shows that the APP has been installed less than 10,000 times.

In August of the same year, Meituan directly tested the short video function within the APP. This time, Meituan focused on "making money by watching videos". The operation model was similar to that of Tik Tok and Kuaishou Express. Users could get gold coin rewards by browsing the platform's grass-growing content. Not only that, Meituan also launched a tool called "Meituan Pipixia" to help creators edit pictures and texts and edit videos.

After that, Meituan APP launched the "Go to the Second Floor" function in November 2022. After users pull down the page, they can quickly enter the takeaway ordering link. However, this function has been removed from the shelves, and it is unknown when Meituan's short video road will be able to run smoothly.

The reason why Meituan can't let go of short videos is that the Internet industry as a whole has basically reached its ceiling, and Meituan urgently needs to expand its own boundaries and find incremental new customers. Short videos are more suitable for users to plant grass in the local life field of food, travel and other services. After all, short videos can bring users an immersive experience, thereby attracting users to place orders.

On the other hand, Douyin has already started to lay out the "heart-warming takeaway" field, aiming to leverage Meituan's dominant position in local life. According to research data released by Bocom International, Meituan's store business GMV in 2022 is about 236 billion yuan, while Douyin's local life has set a full-year GMV target of 50 billion yuan in 2022.

However, according to the "2022 Douyin Life Service Data Report", Douyin exceeded its target, with a final GMV of 70 billion, and set a target of 150 billion in 2023. This growth rate did give Meituan a certain sense of crisis, and Meituan had no choice but to frequently test the waters in the short video field.

2. The Dilemma of Meituan’s Short Videos

Meituan has natural barriers in short video business. We can analyze Meituan's short video business from the logic of "users" and "fields". Meituan does not have an advantage in either aspect.

On the user side, since Meituan has always followed the business principle of "people looking for goods", it has long been deeply engaged in local life services, focusing on merchant construction, low-price packages and other businesses, and naturally has firmly occupied the minds of users in the group buying field.

However, it is difficult for users of its products to be interested in Meituan’s short video business. Although Meituan is the only one in the local life field, it is not familiar with the gameplay of short videos, which can be seen from the frequent efforts of Meituan’s merchants to broadcast themselves.

When merchants broadcast their own content on Meituan, firstly, there are no well-known anchors to attract traffic, which causes all data in Meituan’s live broadcast room to be low; secondly, the performance of merchants when selling in the live broadcast room is worse than that of Douyin, which makes it difficult for Meituan’s live broadcast room to achieve a good conversion rate.

Even the "Go to Second Floor" function launched by Meituan is just imitating the operating model of Douyin. The short video content of Meituan's "Go to Second Floor" is of a single style and lacks novelty. It is far less "tempting" than the fancy food appreciation videos launched by Douyin.

As for the "place", the Meituan App as a whole is nothing more than a "one-stop shop for eating, drinking, playing and having fun", which can provide consumers with ample choices, and there are also various graphic and text content recommendations below the consumption entrance.

However, Meituan has not built a usage scenario for short videos for consumers. From this point of view, Dianping has done far better than Meituan. As early as 2017, Dianping launched the "Review Video" page and formed special content that conforms to the platform's functions.

Although Dianping’s short videos cannot compare with those of Douyin and Kuaishou, they have actually increased the user usage time. Some netizens lamented that “even Dianping’s videos can be watched for a while.” As for when Meituan’s short videos can make users develop the habit of watching for a while, we need to wait and see how it develops.

3. Time is running out for Meituan

Combined with what has been mentioned above, short videos are more like a supplement to the "tool" role of Meituan, and are more suitable for helping merchants improve product conversion rates. As for the role of short videos in boosting Meituan's various data, it is still difficult to evaluate.

It is worth mentioning that although the Internet dividend has peaked, the local life sector still has broad room for development. According to iResearch Consulting, the scale of China's local life service market in 2020 is about 19.5 trillion yuan, and it will grow to 35.3 trillion yuan in 2025. At the same time, the online penetration rate of local life services will also increase from 24.3% in 2020 to 30.8% in 2025.

With the rise of Douyin local life, it is expected that Meituan will continue to expand its short video business closed loop in order to maintain its own "moat". After all, the commercial conversion rate of the platform is often closely related to the length of time users stay on the platform, and short videos have a significant role in boosting this indicator.

Faced with competition from Douyin, Meituan’s “eat, drink and have fun” store logic is increasingly failing to retain users. The “short video + commercialization” business model is being favored by more and more platforms. This can be seen from the fact that Xiaohongshu and Dianping, which started out as graphic and text businesses, have all started to deploy short videos.

Although Meituan’s “Quanquan Tandian” mini program also encourages influencers to publish content on channels such as Weibo and Xiaohongshu, its layout for short videos has lagged far behind in comparison.

In addition, since the external links were opened up, the integration and development of major platforms has become a general trend. After Meituan and Kuaishou reached a cooperation, Douyin also chose to join hands with Ele.me. In essence, the ultimate goal of the two parties' strong alliance is still to break through the barriers between content and commercialization.

In the future, the commercialization process of content-driven platforms may become the mainstream. From any perspective, Meituan’s short video business needs to quickly "strengthen" and find the breakthrough point.

Author: Yuguochuiyan; WeChat public account: TopKlout (ID: TopKlout)