Author | Liu Baodan From performance to market confidence, Meituan is walking out of a three-year low point, but Wang Xing is not stopping there - he has even bigger plans. Going overseas has become a must for Chinese companies. Meituan, which has been warming up for 8 years, has finally made up its mind to put going overseas on the agenda. Recently, Meituan began recruiting senior engineers for international silver enterprise direct connection. After the model was successful in the Hong Kong market, Meituan officially kicked off its overseas expansion, accelerated recruitment and put the first stop of the overseas expansion in Saudi Arabia in the Middle East. Going overseas is a critical turning point, which means that after more than ten years of capacity accumulation, Meituan has to export its local life capabilities to the world, which is as significant as the replication of TikTok by ByteDance. In the wave of Internet companies going overseas, Meituan went overseas later because local life patterns are more important than social, e-commerce and other industries. However, Wang Xing must make this move. Against the background of intensified domestic competition and the shrinking of community group buying, he must find a new growth story. On his entrepreneurial journey, Wang Xing is still determined to create a new business legend in this global adventure. A must-have question. Meituan has fought a beautiful takeaway battle in Hong Kong. On May 6, Measurable AI, a market research firm, released the latest data showing that by March 2024, according to the number of orders, KeeTa, the takeaway business of Meituan in Hong Kong, has a market share of 44%, rising to the largest takeaway platform in Hong Kong. However, Hong Kong is only a stopover for Meituan's overseas expansion, and Meituan has set its real meaning of going overseas in Saudi Arabia. Wall Street news learned that Meituan has been recruiting people around the direction of going overseas in the past two months. The positions include engineers, overseas human resources and operation experts, international payment and transaction product managers, mainly responsible for payments, employee management and related products in overseas markets. More importantly, the recruitment of local talents. More than a month ago, Meituan posted relevant recruitment information on LinkedIn and the Middle East recruitment platform Baye.com, with Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, as the place of work. From the city selection, Meituan did not choose the United States with a larger market space, nor did it choose Southeast Asia where culture and food are more similar, but chose Saudi Arabia. It can be seen that Meituan's overseas expansion strategy still has a heavy experimental component and is more cautious. Wang Xing is not fighting an unprepared battle. For this overseas expansion, Meituan has been planning for many years. As early as 2016, Wang Xing began to consider the issue of going overseas and visited Silicon Valley, Berlin, Israel, Jakarta and other places. In 2017, Meituan officially laid out overseas accommodation business, first connecting hotels in nearly 100 countries overseas to the Meituan application. At that time, the domestic and foreign takeaway wars were in full swing, and with Meituan's listing in Hong Kong in 2018, Wang Xing's overseas strategy was forced to be shelved. Since then, Meituan has also made a series of international investments, including Swiggy in India, Gojek in Indonesia, and Opay in Nigeria, involving food, taxis, payments and other fields, to prepare for going overseas. Along with the frequent news reports of Meituan's victory in Hong Kong, Meituan's overseas plan was finally brought to an unprecedented strategic height in 2024, and Wang Xing once again rushed to the forefront. In February, Meituan put the home business group, the in-store business group and other businesses into the core local business sector, and appointed Wang Putong as CEO, while Wang Xing personally took charge of overseas business, which ensured the landing of the overseas expansion strategy in the organizational structure. In fact, before the confirmation of the overseas expansion strategy, Wang Xing personally visited the Middle East last May and met with members of the Saudi royal family, laying the foundation for Meituan's layout in Saudi Arabia.

Editor | Huang Yu More than half a year ago, e-commerce giants began to follow in the footsteps of PDD to launch "refund only". However, the drawbacks of "refund only" gradually emerged, and now Taobao is correcting its course. On July 26th, Taobao announced that it would optimize the "refund only" strategy, improve the seller's after-sales autonomy based on the new version of the experience score (store experience score), the higher the experience score, the greater the seller's disposal rights, and stores with a score of 4.8 or higher will receive more autonomy. The relevant policies will be officially implemented on August 9th. It's easy to see that Taobao is trying to strike a new balance between user experience and seller rights. Over the past few years, the biggest change in the e-commerce industry has been the rise of PDD. In addition to low prices, "refund only" is also a core factor in PDD's success. Therefore, e-commerce platforms have gone from questioning and understanding PDD to learning from PDD. At the end of last year, in order to strengthen consumer rights, Taobao began to support buyers for refund only, and JD.com also revised its guidelines to add standards for user refund only. However, while "refund only" protects consumers, it is also vulnerable to abuse by "wool party" and causes harm to seller rights. For example, during this year's June 18th promotion, many clothing merchants stated that the return rate can reach 80% or even 90%. Since consumers can apply for a refund without returning the goods for quality issues, a large number of merchants are experiencing significant losses. Insiders at Taobao told Wall Street News that Taobao is taking a beneficial exploration between users and sellers by optimizing the "refund only" based on the store experience score. "By guaranteeing consumer rights, it also significantly optimizes the business environment and forms a more benign and healthy e-commerce ecology." This also conforms to the current tone of Taobao's adjustment of the business environment. Recently, Taobao launched a round of scale modification for merchants, such as clarifying that "experience score" is the core basis for traffic distribution. In addition, from September 1st, Tmall will cancel the annual software service fee for the platform. However, Taobao's relaxation of the "refund only" rights of sellers is only to a certain extent. The premise for sellers to obtain autonomy is to continue to improve their service capabilities. At the beginning of the year, Taotian announced the upgrade of the new store comprehensive experience rating standard. After the upgrade, the rating focuses more on consumer-related indicators such as "refusal rate for refund" and "platform help rate." In addition, services that affect consumer shopping decisions, such as "return insurance", will also be a bonus for merchants. In other words, if sellers want to get high scores, they really need to serve consumers well. Of course, Taobao also provides practical rewards such as traffic to high-quality merchants, and this time it has also ceded some after-sales rights. Wall Street News learned that after the optimization strategy of "refund only" is launched, Taobao will not actively intervene through Wangwang or support refund only after receiving goods for sellers whose store experience score is greater than or equal to 4.8. Instead, Taobao encourages merchants to negotiate with consumers first. In short, Taobao will reduce or cancel after-sales intervention for high-quality stores, and the platform will give different degrees of autonomy to merchants according to the experience score and industry nature. In addition to giving merchants more autonomy, Taobao will also provide multiple after-sales service solutions for merchants to choose from, guiding merchants to continuously optimize after-sales services and reduce disputes and losses caused by "refund only". It is worth mentioning that Taobao has also optimized the appeal process for "refund only". After the user initiates an appeal, the platform will invite a third-party testing agency to sample the product. If the test passes, the platform will compensate the loss to the seller. As Taobao adjusts the "refund only" policy, it is time for the industry's grand "learning from PDD" campaign to reflect. In the increasingly fierce e-commerce competition, true innovation and differentiation can bring greater competitiveness than copying and learning from others.

Since last year's singles' day sales, jd.com has set high expectations for livestreaming and is trying to grab a piece of the cake in the fierce livestreaming competition.

Wall Street News learned that jd.com recently announced that it will increase its monthly cash and traffic resources by 1 billion yuan, providing uncapped subsidies in cash and silver and real support to high-quality institutions and influencers.

This is at least the third time jd.com has tilted resources towards livestreaming this year, showing its dedication to content ecommerce.

In March of this year, jd.com's retail sector first proposed the "content ecosystem," which, along with the "open ecosystem" and "real-time retail," is listed as one of the company's three major directions for 2024, the "three must-win battles." According to insiders, the "content ecosystem" includes livestreaming, short videos, and other internal sectors of jd.com.

A month later, jd.com officially announced that it would invest one billion yuan and one billion traffic to attract more original creators and high-quality content institutions. The person in charge of jd.com's content ecosystem stated that video creators are an important force to drive the prosperity of the content ecosystem, with the aim of inspiring creators to produce professional and interesting content.

In this incentive, jd.com provides subsidies in cash to experts in more than 20 creative fields that cover digital 3C, home appliances, and maternal and child products. jd.com also provides more exposure opportunities for high-quality, original videos. In addition, jd.com extends an olive branch to MCN institutions and specifically sets up a 5 million yuan incentive list for institutions.

The 618 promotion has become a rehearsal for jd.com live streaming. As of the evening of June 18, 2024, jd.com's transaction volume and order volume during the 618 sales event reached a new high, with a year-on-year growth of over 200% in jd.com live streaming order volume. Jd.com's digital influencer, Yan Xi, launched in over 5000 brand live streaming rooms, accumulating over 0.4 million hours of live streaming and over 0.1 billion views.

Currently, e-commerce is still in a fierce market competition, and jd.com is facing attacks from new e-commerce forces such as pdd holdings, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu, as well as traditional e-commerce rival Alibaba. Throughout the entire e-commerce industry, the sector with the highest growth rate is still live streaming e-commerce.

According to a research report from iResearch Consulting, the scale of China's live streaming e-commerce market reached 4.9 trillion yuan in 2023, with a year-on-year growth rate of 35.2%. It is estimated that the compound annual growth rate of the market size from 2024 to 2026 will reach 18%. For jd.com, this is an opportunity that cannot be missed.

Jd.com has been actively involved in the development of live streaming e-commerce, but it may be considered as a latecomer. In fact, as early as 2016, jd.com started doing live streaming, and Liu Qiangdong even personally appeared in cooking videos. However, jd.com has always regarded live streaming as a marketing method without reaching a strategic level, thus missing the golden period of live streaming e-commerce. Now, jd.com hopes to regain its place in the industry through digital influencer live streaming.

This time, while jd.com is incentivizing service providers and experts, it is also focusing on digital influencer live streaming service providers, which means that jd.com's main support is still in digital influencer live streaming.

Specifically, jd.com will provide targeted support to service providers and experts with millions of dollars in cash and billions of traffic. Once the sales volume reaches a certain scale, they can receive a one-time cash reward of up to 1 million yuan in a single month. The platform will also provide high commission quality goods.

Specifically, jd.com will provide targeted support to service providers and experts with millions of dollars in cash and billions of traffic. Once the sales volume reaches a certain scale, they can receive a one-time cash reward of up to 1 million yuan in a single month. The platform will also provide high commission quality goods.

JD.com hopes to create a more specialized live streaming ecosystem by introducing industry experts, well-known artists, and other expert-level certified talents for 15 popular sectors. In addition, JD.com is recruiting professional live streaming service providers for industrial belts and providing them with comprehensive support such as targeted communication, traffic, and policy incentives.

For the first time, JD.com proposed to introduce digital human live streaming service providers, providing billion-level traffic and fully opening up the floating rights (platform traffic entrance) of JD.com live channels, search, recommendations, and other public domain channels, giving direct traffic support to digital human live streaming.

According to the above-mentioned insiders, JD.com aims to help businesses reduce the cost of live streaming through large-scale introduction of digital human service providers, benefiting nearly 10,000 merchants. At the same time, JD.com platform will also classify digital human service providers and improve the digital human product capabilities in terms of cooperation modes and cooperation links.

After 8 years of rapid development in the live streaming e-commerce industry, whether JD.com can seize the tail of the live streaming trend and achieve overtaking on the bend remains to be seen. Time will soon provide the answer.