It's strange to open the Internet financial headlines with tons of comments about community group buying, but it's hard to see the real experience of ordinary users on community group buying platforms. But who do we really care about for better service and more comfortable shopping?

So I spent a week experiencing five of the biggest community group-buying platforms. I thought they were all similar goods, same craftsmanship, and should all be the same. But after actually using them, I realized they are still very different.

Belongs to fresh food e-commerce. What is the difference?

The so-called community group purchase, although they all belong to the fresh food e-commerce, but and the box horse fresh life, JD.COM home is obviously different. Neither the box Ma Fresh kind of goods complete large-scale offline supermarkets, nor Jingdong kind of same-day courier, door-to-door delivery.COM home delivery, but the use of the same day order, the next day to pick up the model.

Sounds not convenient enough, nor the traditional impression of Internet speed. So why can community group buying survive from a fresh food e-commerce model?

Actually take a moment to think about it. Pick up food within an hour is not the most important need for daily grocery shopping, but cheap. Cheap and fast money are two things that run counter to each other. So give up the fast community group buying, greatly reducing the cost of logistics and distribution. Then what we have to do is to directly develop the express post stations and street stores throughout the neighborhood into head and pick-up points, without adding new bricks and mortar to attract a steady stream of new customers. Goods from the supplier directly to the hands of the user, eliminating many intermediate links, further reducing the price.

So currently the country's largest community group buying platform can be divided into two categories. One is the community group-buying platforms that have slowly spread from small localities to the whole country under this mode of operation, i.e. Prosperity Optimization and Ten Youth Groups.

The other category is the big Internet companies that are halfway into the game. At present, Meituan Preferred, Drop's Orange Heart Preferred, and Pinduoduo's DuoDuo are the fastest expanding companies in the country. They are characterized by the fact that although they do not have the accumulation of users in the first few years, but by smashing money, pushing, expanding, and quickly gain popularity, the scale is quickly matched by the old players of Shengshi, Optimization, Ten Society.

In fact, Shengxing Tour Hustle and Shi Hui Group also received strategic investments from JD.COM and Alibaba respectively. In other words, the battlefield of community group purchasing is like the swords of the Internet giants. When it comes to burning money for expansion, no one can fake it. How about the buying process, delivery service, food quality, returns and after-sales protection? These are the focus of our comparative examination.

Newcomers exclusive offers, the United States Mission priority return.

For most Internet services, there is a big discount for the first order, and community group-buying platforms are no exception. I compared the five platforms, and except for Prosperity Preferred, which doesn't offer exclusive price discounts for newcomers, the other four platforms have similar promotions. Among them, Orange Heart Preferred's first order discount for newcomers should be the biggest. In addition to the special low price for newcomers, there is also a coupon of $5 off $6 and a coupon of $15 back on $3. The first order is equivalent to a white.

Of course, the first time I placed an order on these platforms, I chose the newcomer's special offer, but I did not expect to fall on my face in the United States.

The newcomer's special offer we chose for our Meituan was $0.99 for a carton of ten eggs, but when we were notified the next day to pick them up we found out that we were automatically refunded by the platform for being out of stock. What was even more puzzling was that the same product was still available on the platform the next day, but the price shown became $5.90 per carton with a limit of 2.

The eggs that were prioritized for refund by the company were still available on the platform the next day.

It's not uncommon for platforms to automatically refund due to out of stock, but this was my first discount and being refunded led to the failure of my first benefit. The head of the shipping point also expressed his helplessness and sympathy for my loss and said that he would respond to the platform about the issue. Meanwhile, the head of the delegation also told

For community group buys, the pickup point and the head of the delegation play an important role in sales and after-sales, which also largely determines the experience of the entire buying process.

After the order is placed, the logistics department delivers the goods to the group leaders, who are the pickup points where they are located. These pickup points are not exclusive, and a team leader may have joined all five platforms at the same time as they **** the same pickup point.

Through the pickups of different team leaders, I found that the conditions of these community group buy pickup points varied from a barber store, to a fast food restaurant, to a dried fruit store, and even an empty room with no one in it?

The food storage problems caused by these different pickup points are worrisome. One of the biggest problems is the preferred pickup point for Ten Associations and Prosperity. Hui Mission is a fried food store that sells melon seeds and dried fruits. There are no refrigerators or freezers. By the time I went to pick them up after 6pm the frozen meat had melted and water was running down the bag. Feelings you know. It may be ok now in winter, but soon the temperature will rise and it's really hard to keep the meat safe.

Prosperity is a little more exaggerated, it is unattended empty room. The groceries you buy are lying quietly in a box and anyone can go in and get them, let alone keep the meat in the fridge.

It's best to store goods in the worst possible conditions.

In the early days of community group buying, convenience stores were the main pickup points. For example, Wang Youchuan gradually developed from Furong Wang, a chain of convenience supermarkets in the Hunan market. But when these local community group-buying platforms expanded nationwide, it became difficult to replicate the local model.

Combined with the fierce competition from multiple platforms, the function of the head of the group slowly weakened into a placement point in order to spread the market first. This expanding demand has also caused the threshold for pickup points to become very low. Basically, as long as you can provide a place where you can put goods, you can be a pickup point and head of the group, which causes the problem of poor pickup experience.

When the community group-buying shipping point and the person in charge changed from emphasizing quality in the past to emphasizing quantity today, the commission that the person in charge can get is greatly reduced, and then the after-sales service is hardly satisfactory.

The 10th group has no customer service and refuses returns.

In my quest for after-sales service, I found that the biggest problem is still Prosperity Optimization and 10Society. Neither offers an online return channel or official online customer service. Prosperity Preferred also has a 400 phone number, while TenShares can't even find a customer service number.

In terms of after-sale return policy, community group purchases are usually

No return or exchange for non-quality issues for fresh goods, and non-fresh goods are supported with no reason for return. So I purposely bought some non-fresh goods on each platform and then applied for a return when I picked up the goods.

Contrasted down to find, the United States group preferred, orange heart preferred and more than buy food, return are more worry, online application for return, goods back to the head, the head immediately in the background through the audit and then instant refund to the account. The company's products and services have been widely recognized by the public, and the company's products and services have been widely recognized by the public, and the company's products and services have been widely recognized by the public, and the company's products and services have been widely recognized by the public.

The manager of the pickup point rejected my request for a refund, and replied that once the goods were delivered to the pickup point, they would not support the return of the goods, regardless of whether they were fresh or not. Since I didn't see a phone number for customer service, I basically had no way to file a complaint.

This time I have been buying food from these community group buying platforms for a week, and in general, there are good parts of my experience with them, such as the fact that the food is really very cheap, and basically, I don't want to go to the supermarket or food market anymore.

Overall comparison, Orange Heart Preferred and DuoDuo's performance is more moderate, Orange Heart Preferred is my favorite when I use it because it is more user-friendly in the overall page design and function layout, and there are enough seconds discounts. But limited to space, I'm still here to these platforms respective shortcomings and easy to step on the mine of the place is the main, but also hope to be more helpful to you.

While Xingsheng Youxuan and Ten Aloe Tuan have the advantage of pre-accumulation, I have to say that in terms of after-sales service and service, compared to the Internet giants are still lagging behind. When a number of giants at the same time into the game, we are faced with not only price war, there is a service war, and the old community group buying platform has been in crisis, is not it also to the time of self-renovation?

The new entrants, such as Meituan Preferred, Orange Heart Preferred, and DuoDuo Grocery, seem to be very determined. Such as the drop CEO Cheng Wei said on the orange heart preferential investment is not set a ceiling; Pinduoduo founder Huang Zheng to personally lead the team more buy food; the United States Mission Wang Xing said the battle of fresh food must be won?

Every community group buying entrant is full of confidence, through a short experience, it is now difficult to assert exactly who will survive, because when the model are the same, the competition is actually still the service, the U.S. group preferences, if the first single discount as a set, or ten Aloe group, the Hing Sheng preferences for a long time after-sales responsibility is all pushed to the head of the group, then no matter how rich its family background, the last will be consumers The first time I saw this, I was able to get a good deal on it.

Related Q&A: Related Q&A: Why is the Hunan Xingsheng preferred e-commerce platform so hot in the countryside, villages are surrounded by them?

Xing Sheng You Choice - China's community e-commerce leader, headquartered in Changsha, Hunan Province. Ltd. is a community e-commerce platform incubated by Hunan's famous convenience store chain brand "Furong Xingsheng". Innovative model Xingsheng preferred relying on community entity convenience stores, and at the same time play its own logistics system advantages, reduce the intermediate circulation links, through the WeChat small program online booking, the formation of "pre-sale + self-pickup" mode, so that consumers can enjoy the carefree after-sales, to achieve the depth of the integration of online and offline. Serving the majority of community families, providing fresh fruits, meat, poultry and aquatic products, rice, flour, grain and oil, daily necessities and other selected commodities to meet the needs of consumers' daily life and consumption upgrade. At the same time, Xingsheng Preferred platform for the goods sold to assume 100% after-sales service, the same day the order! Next day delivery! Enhance the shopping experience of consumers. Three major missions revitalize stores to empower the upstream to change consumer lifestyles Investors Today's Capital Tencent Investment Zhenge Fund Furong Xingsheng GSR Ventures U.S. KKR Zhongding Capital China Renaissance Capital New Horizon Coverage Area Currently, Xingsheng Preferred has covered 13 provinces and municipalities, including Hunan, Hubei, Sichuan, Chongqing, Guizhou, Guangdong, Guangxi, Jiangxi, Fujian, Shaanxi, Hebei, Henan and Shandong, as well as More than 500 prefecture (county) level cities and towns and villages. About 200,000 merchants have joined!

"In Hunan, you can buy things through Xingsheng Youxuan in almost every township, town and village, and if you order before 11pm tonight, the goods will arrive at 11am tomorrow morning."

Three or four tiers of cities and even township markets are the main positions of Xingsheng Youxuan.

If the current e-commerce penetration rate as well as logistical efficiency, in the resource abundance and purchase experience in two dimensions, the second and third tier market consumption experience has been basically leveled with the first line of users, then the lower line of urban consumers first of all in the abundance of goods there is still a lot of room for expansion, so through the differentiation of categories, especially fresh prying to go to the market and the user's efficiency is much higher.

And before that, Hibiscus Hing Sheng has been in the market for more than ten years, the accumulated resources, can let Hing Sheng preferred to strike quickly, quickly start. According to incomplete statistics, its Hibiscus Xing Sheng franchise has reached more than 13,000.

One of the B2B e-commerce module, Xing Sheng Abita ordering platform, covering Hunan, Guangdong, Hubei, Anhui, Chongqing and other 16 provinces and cities of more than 80 prefecture-level cities and more than 200 county-level cities.

B2B logistics and distribution service outlets covering the province, city, district, county, township, village (community) five-level area, and this is also for the sinking of the Xingsheng Preferred, a good logistics supply chain level of padding.