Douyin Supermarket becomes a regular store, but the end of live streaming is still the shelves

During the Spring Festival this year, the "Douyin Supermarket" was officially launched nationwide. On the same track, the "Douyin Supermarket" is inevitably compared with big brothers such as Alibaba and JD.com. Let's take a look at the "Douyin Supermarket" in this article.

Douyin is more and more determined to become a shelf e-commerce. Recently, Yilan Business observed that the "Douyin Supermarket", which was still in the pilot stage last year, has been officially launched during the Spring Festival. You can directly enter it by searching "Douyin Supermarket" in the Douyin APP.

In fact, as early as June last year, there were media reports that Douyin was doing a self-operated business similar to JD Supermarket, Douyin Supermarket delivering goods to the door, and piloting it in cities such as Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hangzhou. In October, many media reported that Douyin Supermarket business was in the early stage of pilot. Relevant reports show that "the investment promotion has not been made public, but only through the targeted invitation of the store manager.

The rest of the content is just verbal talk. In November, according to Qichacha, Beijing Zitiao Network Technology Co., Ltd. applied for the "Douyin Supermarket" trademark. More than half a year after Douyin entered the supermarket business, "Douyin Supermarket" was officially launched nationwide during the Spring Festival.

01 Douyin Supermarket becomes a regular company

Yilan Business learned that Douyin is engaged in self-operated business similar to JD Supermarket. This business is developed by ByteDance's e-commerce department and is under two teams with Douyin's local life business. In other words, Douyin Supermarket is a business under Douyin's e-commerce.

In October last year, according to multiple media reports, Douyin Supermarket launched a pilot program in four cities, namely Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Huizhou and Dongguan. Some consumers in the four cities can find the "supermarket" entrance in Douyin Mall and shop in Douyin Supermarket. Douyin Mall is the only entrance to Douyin Supermarket.

In November, a Shenzhen Douyin user also told Yilan Business that after opening the Douyin Mall, he could see the entrance to the Douyin Supermarket.

After the recent full launch of "Douyin Supermarket", "Douyin Supermarket" has lost its independent column that existed during the pilot phase. You need to search on the Douyin APP homepage or the Douyin Mall homepage to enter.

During the pilot period, Douyin Supermarket's three main labels, "official direct delivery", "next-day delivery to your door" and "free shipping for orders over 88 yuan", were changed to "official direct delivery", "selected good products" and "worry-free after-sales service" after the official launch.

After the official launch, the price of free shipping was not stated, but Yilan Business Observation found that some products require a minimum purchase of 88 yuan for free shipping, and some specific products are free shipping if they are less than 88 yuan. Whether free shipping is available can only be seen at the final payment. It is worth noting that the preferential policies introduced during the pilot period for new customers, such as "8 yuan off for the first order", "20 yuan off for 88 yuan", and "free shipping for the first order", were cancelled after the official launch. The hot-selling area in the center was retained.

The right side shows Douyin Supermarket during the pilot period

Of course, on the same track, Douyin Supermarket cannot avoid being compared with big brothers such as Alibaba and JD.com.

02 Douyin Supermarket VS Tmall Supermarket VS JD Supermarket

From the entrance point of view, JD Supermarket and Tmall Supermarket both have a direct entrance on the homepage, but as of now, Douyin Supermarket requires search to enter.

From the overall design point of view, Douyin Supermarket is more similar to JD Supermarket. JD Supermarket focuses on "high-quality products", "compensation for overpriced products", "fast delivery" and "worry-free after-sales service". Douyin Supermarket focuses on "official direct delivery", "selected good products" and "worry-free after-sales service".

It is worth noting that Yilan Business mentioned in "I, Douyin e-commerce, 2 years old, want to open a supermarket" in November last year that Douyin supermarket and Tmall supermarket during the pilot period are more similar. Tmall supermarket has two modes: next-day delivery and half-day delivery. Half-day delivery is free shipping for orders over 49 yuan, and next-day delivery is free shipping for orders over 88 yuan.

Douyin Supermarket shows next-day delivery, free shipping for orders over 88 yuan. The central area of ​​Douyin Supermarket is the hot sale, which corresponds to the central area of ​​Tmall Supermarket's today's crazy rush. The color at that time was also the same as Tmall Supermarket.

After half a year of pilot operation, it is obvious that Douyin Supermarket is more like JD Supermarket in terms of main color and main label.

In terms of product categories, Douyin Supermarket currently lists 7 categories, including parent-child life, household daily necessities, snacks and specialties, beauty and cleaning, grains, oils and seasonings, wine, beverages and dairy products, and household cleaning. Tmall Supermarket has a total of 19 categories, including snacks and fast food, grains, oils and seasonings, and JD Supermarket has more than 40 subcategories, including casual snacks, grains, oils, rice and noodles, and maternal and child products. Compared with its predecessors, Douyin Supermarket's categories are not comprehensive.

In terms of service, Tmall Supermarket and JD Supermarket are obviously more complete. In addition to the "7-day no-reason return" launched by all three parties, the product details page shows that Tmall Supermarket has also launched 0-second return and 30-day worry-free return services, while JD Supermarket directly delivers and provides after-sales service.

In terms of logistics, when arriving at the same address, Tmall Supermarket and JD Supermarket both showed that it can be delivered the next day and provide door-to-door delivery services, but Douyin Supermarket only showed that it can be delivered the next day, and it is not yet known whether it can be delivered to the door.

In summary, Douyin currently has no advantage in terms of ease of entry, product variety, and currently provided services. Judging from the main label, Douyin Supermarket intends to build itself into a quality platform focusing on "service", but with JD Supermarket in the lead, it is not easy to simply imitate, and it depends on the product quality and subsequent performance.

03 The end point of live e-commerce is the shelf

Zhuang Shuai, an expert in the retail e-commerce industry and founder of Bailian Consulting, told Yilan Business that supermarkets are a high-frequency consumption category . Many fast-moving consumer goods in supermarkets are weekly and seasonal products, which are consumables that need to be purchased every week and every quarter. The repurchase rate is particularly high, and they are also standard products, so supermarkets are basically a business that must be fought for online.

From an industry perspective, online supermarket business has great development potential.

According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, in 2022, the total retail sales of consumer goods reached 43,973.3 billion yuan, a decrease of 0.2% over the previous year. Among them, the national online retail sales reached 13,785.3 billion yuan, an increase of 4.0% over the previous year. In other words, despite the economic downturn last year, online retail business still maintained good growth.

In fact, with the improvement of various infrastructures, the operation of online supermarkets has become mature. An offline retail practitioner who wishes to remain anonymous also told Yilan Business that consumers' shopping habits are changing, and online channels are more likely to gain traffic with the support of brand awareness.

From the perspective of Douyin, the launch of "Douyin Supermarket" now is also in line with Douyin's e-commerce development strategy.

In August last year, Douyin E-commerce announced internally that it would focus on shopping malls and brands in the future. Supermarkets are very important for Douyin to build shopping malls.

Zhuang Shuai told Yilan Business that Douyin now wants to become a shopping mall, which requires increasing the repurchase rate, lowering the purchase threshold, and attracting more consumers.

For Douyin, the supermarket category is the best. Products like shampoo, toothpaste and toothbrush, paper towels, snacks, etc. have low barriers to entry and high standardization. Subsidies can also be used to increase repeat purchases, and there is no need for live streaming. In addition, Douyin itself is promoting shelf e-commerce. At this stage, the supermarket category is very consistent with the direction of Douyin's e-commerce development.

Retail expert Bao Yuezhong also said that Douyin Mall has achieved a certain level. In this case, launching Douyin Supermarket and focusing on high-frequency products that meet users' daily needs can also promote the further development of Douyin e-commerce, which is in line with the current layout of the entire e-commerce. However, the specific level of achievement remains to be further observed.

From the perspective of Douyin e-commerce, entering the online supermarket and further satisfying consumers' shopping habits will help improve Douyin e-commerce's business segments.

However, shelf e-commerce and live streaming e-commerce are also fundamentally different. The supermarket business is not a short-term business. It cannot be done well by relying solely on subsidies and short-term traffic. Only by improving the product supply chain and finding its own advantages can it break through in the fiercely competitive retail market. Douyin Supermarket still has a long way to go.

It is worth noting that in addition to the Douyin platform, anchors who have made a lot of money by live streaming are also shifting to shelf e-commerce. At the end of last year, Li Jiaqi's team's mini program "All Girls' Member Center" launched a blood recovery function, which can upload the order data of Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room and all girls' live broadcast rooms to the mini program in exchange for membership points, and then use the points to redeem goods.

Oriental Selection launched an independent APP shortly after becoming popular, and announced a partnership with JD Logistics in September. With the help of JD Logistics' integrated business and logistics supply chain solution and a nationwide logistics distribution network, it can achieve same-day or next-day delivery of same-city orders for self-operated products, and 72-hour delivery of cross-provincial orders.

Simba launched an independent platform, Holax. Simba also stated in an internal letter on June 18 that this year, the Xinxuan Group will be led by the User Experience Center to upgrade three major sectors: optimizing user service guarantees, upgrading supplier service experience, and innovating Xinxuan services.

Obviously, both the anchor and the platform have realized that live streaming is just a starting point. Only by establishing a lasting connection with consumers and precipitating public domain traffic into their own private domain traffic can more possibilities be obtained.

Of course, for the entire consumer market, the participation of more giants is also a good thing. Competition can promote the replacement of products and services, and provide consumers with a better consumer experience in the future.

Author: Cheng Rumeng

Source: Yilan Business (ID: yilanshangye), a professional consumer service platform