On October 10, after all the capitals, who had been burned by group buying websites, learned about the situation in the United States, they almost gave up the capital increase plan for some group buying websites that performed well. Some of the people who signed contracts to provide funds in stages also stopped.

Many small capital parties even require the group buying website to return the remaining funds to the investors in proportion. Some people are greedy and have constraints on the group buying website in the contract during the investment. The investors can terminate the investment at any time and forcefully take away the funds of the group buying website.

In the Internet era, the news spread quickly, and the capital behind it was naturally learned by major group buying websites that even if some group buying websites were not affected, they naturally began to shrink their expansion strategies because they knew that the financing channels of group buying websites had been cut off, and the rest would have to rely on themselves if they wanted to survive. In this case, if they burned money, they would be fools.

But the storm is far more than that. If the group buying website just cuts off its expansion plan, its impact on traditional merchants will only lack one marketing channel, but the problem is capital!

Merchants and group buying websites generally have a checkout cycle, ranging from one month to two or three months. This is the credibility that countless group buying websites have burned tens of billions and spent years to obtain. At the same time, it is also to use the time difference of "payment" to increase their cash reserves and money burning amount.

In the process of Tengxun and Alibaba burning money with all their might, many small group buying websites began to slowly withdraw from the market due to their scale and determination. However, this was a process. Although there were some people who ran away with buckets, the overall ratio was not large and was within a controllable range.

In addition, Tengxun Alibaba Lashou.com Wowotuan is desperately spending money, and merchants are making a lot of money. It is impossible to deny the entire group buying industry just because a small number of group buying websites owe money and refuse to repay it.

But this time, it was a completely different concept. Most group buying websites suddenly stopped, and many companies even lost their headquarters, and even their employees' salaries were not paid. Merchants whose business channels were lagging behind were confused. It was not until there were too many similar things that they realized that their money might not be available.

There are many similar incidents, and after the current social software and news media are spread, it triggers a further domino effect. Merchants whose money has not been recovered, no matter who the partner is, will come back first. Those who cannot be collected will be prepared to go to court as they make a fuss. Even if the group buying websites that do not owe money, merchants will begin to be extremely cautious and refuse to conduct long-term checkout policies.

This approach has caused the operating costs of group buying websites to rise sharply. At the same time, due to the decline in subsidy amounts, users' demand for group buying has also further decreased. Some merchants have begun to refuse to admit the coupons of group buying websites because of the failure to recover their funds. This has affected users again, and the combination of multiple aspects has also led to the crazy shrinkage of the group buying market.

If it is not corrected in time, then the major group buying websites that have spent 10 billion yuan will return to zero overnight, because users will forget them completely.

In this storm, Wowotuan, which has Tengxun and Ali, was also seriously affected. The four companies are all giants, but because of their greatest ambitions, the cities covered are almost all major cities across the country, and the funds burned out every day are tens of millions.

In order to reduce operating costs, Lashou.com, like Wowotun, adopts a cost-saving method on the market - to deposit the payment fee by betting merchants.

Although the funds and resources behind Lashou.com and Wowotuan can ensure that they can continue to subsidize, merchants with severe injuries cannot agree to continue to cooperate. Many merchants require payment of the goods first, and this money is also a very large amount for the two giants whose business scope covers the country.

At the same time, emergency settlement also takes time and cannot be calculated immediately. Before settlement, many merchants are unwilling to cooperate again, which has caused chaos in the entire group buying system. All group buying websites that can continue to survive must conduct offline negotiations again, and slowly bring these affected merchants back to their camps one by one, which will involve settlement of previous payments, negotiations on future cooperation models, and future settlement models.

In this way, it means that the offline promotion team needs to conduct another comprehensive promotion, which takes a lot of time and is even more troublesome than before, because many merchants are unwilling to cooperate again.

The habits of users who had been desperately spending money before began to decline.

The group purchase subsidies promoted by Alipay are relatively much better, because the Alipay platform, no matter how many coupons are sent out, the platform recognizes them and the data is clear. Although many merchants do not recognize coupons due to the account issues with Wowotuan, the biggest loss for users is that nothing happens, because Alipay’s coupons have no cost.

However, the like model launched by WeChat is different from cash subsidies. This model requires many people to spend time and interpersonal relationships to obtain. In addition, this model was quite novel when Quxin was launched, but now it has become very boring. If you want to get enough likes, you still have to work hard.

After spending a lot of energy, the situation was unredeemable when they arrived at the merchant, which was enough to make many popular curse, while more people were disappointed.

It only took half a month from the initial capital withdrawal to the cancellation of subsidies for group buying websites to the collective stopping of cooperation among most merchants. Within this half month, a large number of small and medium-sized group buying websites began to go bankrupt. Lashou.com and Wowotun also had to start stopping subsidies due to cumbersome accounts and legal issues.

On the Shanghai Stock Exchange, on a south-facing balcony at Toutiao Company headquarters, several high-level officials gathered together to hold a tea party.

"I didn't expect that the crazy group buying that used to be was almost gone overnight." Lin Youde said with some emotion.

Zhang Yidong put down the coffee in his hand and said, "Yes, my wife used to shop around every day and often went to have free lunches, but now they are gone."

Zhou Yujie smiled and said, "This is the ultimate outcome of an industry without competitive barriers. No one can retain users with their own abilities. They go to any other company that is cheaper.

In the future, when we do business in any industry, we must figure out what our advantages are: either you have technical barriers or you have cost barriers. Otherwise, in the end, everyone will be ruined."

In the Internet industry, many industries do not have too high barriers, such as group buying, online car-hailing, shared bicycles, etc. Among them, because group buying has a high overlap with takeaway, the takeaway industry will eventually become a barrier to group buying. Only when takeaway is done well can the position of group buying be maintained.

Moreover, as time goes by, when the traffic is sufficient, group buying has no meaning, because the original intention of group buying is to attract traffic to buy together. When traffic forms a monopoly, just directly target everyone with a discount.

The reason why the online car-hailing war did not end like group buying was because of Tengxun Alibaba's support. At that time, the essence of the online car-hailing war was a payment war, but even so, the two giants could only guide Didi and Kuaidi to merge, because no matter how much money they burned, it would be impossible to defeat their opponents to form a monopoly.

However, the barriers to online car-hailing are still not very strong. Meituan, in later generations, easily entered this field, while Didi is difficult to enter the takeaway industry in reverse because the barriers of the latter are much higher.

Of course, Meituan is entering, but it is difficult to grab the market, because if you want to grab the market, you will inevitably spend a large amount of money. When Didi has monopolized and there is too much capital behind it, Wang Xing only regards online car-hailing as an ordinary business.

Similarly, the same is true for the money-burning war between shared bicycles. The founder ofo refused to merge with competitors like Didi Kuidi. In addition, excessive reliance on capital during the development process caused the founding team to lose their absolute voice over the company. Finally, after turning against capital, the company fell into business chaos. Because of the misappropriation of user deposits, the industry's reputation collapsed, and eventually spread to the entire shared bicycle field.

Zhong Guangwei suddenly said: "Meituan does not seem to have been greatly affected. Their business is still in progress, and it may be just a little smaller in total."

"As expected, Meituan itself has been relatively stable, and she is prepared for the last one, probably Wang Xing." Zhou Yujie looked at the countless pedestrians below and said with a smile:

"In fact, there are only three ways to win in industries like group buying, which are like no barriers.

The first is that it has a strong first-mover advantage, and monopolizes the market without others reacting, but this situation only exists in online businesses, just like our original "shake".

However, it is almost impossible for the offline O2O business to form a monopoly quickly. No matter what offline business, expansion will take time. There are too many people with vision and capital, and they cannot ignore some of the developing business models.

Whether it is the United States or China, the group buying model is unlimitedly copied, and it will be a dead end to the end.

The second is that in a crisis of industry collapse, those who can survive to the end will then expand against the trend and monopolize the market.

The third is that all competitors merge into one to form a monopoly.

However, the more insurable ones are the next two options. After forming a monopoly, everyone else can know that it is meaningless to enter this industry again. It will only lose money. Then the rest can stabilize their status as a giant."

Zhong Guangwei was moved and said, "That means that Meituan is very likely to be the final winner?"
Chapter completed!