Group buying, that is, group shopping, refers to a shopping method in which consumers who know each other or don't know each other unite to increase their bargaining power with merchants in order to obtain the best price.

According to the principle of small profits but quick turnover, merchants can give group discounts below the retail price and quality services that individuals can't get. As a new mode of e-commerce, group buying improves the bargaining power between users and merchants through consumer self-organization, professional group buying websites and merchants' organization of group buying, and gains commodity profits to a great extent, which has attracted the attention of consumers, industry manufacturers and even the capital market.

Characteristics of group buying:

1 has a price advantage for customers who don't have much time or some customers who have higher requirements (such customers are few in the forum). Not every customer will spend a lot of time learning knowledge, and not every customer knows that it is cheap to buy things there. Many customers even go shopping, so the price of group buying is indeed cheaper than that of shopping malls.

2. For customers who study knowledge online all day or have some time to understand the market, it means that you will find cheap and well-served merchants in the building materials market, and it is unlikely to find all the products. If you can't find them, you can buy them. Although it is not necessarily cheap, it is not expensive. Maybe this price is the same as the special price.

3. For products with a fixed brand, and this brand basically has no dealers, only self-operated stores, then group buying is still useful. Because you set the brand, it's all like that, and you only have your own store, and you can't find a dealer to bargain. Even if you bargain to get the price of the group purchase, it will take a lot of energy.

4. Facing all kinds of delicious food every day, it is often blocked by its price. For a restaurant with beautiful environment and fashionable taste, it will be a pity that there are not enough consumers. At this time, the group buying platform can not only satisfy consumers' tastes, but also bring sufficient customers and popularity to group buying businesses.

The development trend of group buying:

In the future, there will be a self-service group purchase service, which allows local businesses to create shop accounts similar to Facebook, and users can pay attention to these accounts and complete transactions. These businesses can add their own transactions, bypassing the long queue of group buying transactions in each city of group buying websites.

You can learn about group buying platforms, many of which are group buying for catering, entertainment and other services. The platform review process takes a long time to submit, and many businesses have not promoted it. The opening of the self-service platform is similar to Taobao Mall, where a hundred flowers blossom and each shows its magic power. In the future, group purchase navigation will realize the integration of community and geographic information system, and C-B group purchase mode may appear.

The group buying industry in China has experienced a series of roller coaster-like development, such as capital darling, thousand regiments war, malicious competition, IPO failure, capital shortage, layoffs, intensive cultivation and mobile spring. Fortunately, the group buying competition that has washed away the leading edge has risen to a higher level. With the influx of Internet giants headed by BAT, the competition of group buying has become a struggle for O2O layout among giants.