On December 27th, 221, Aauto Quicker and Meituan announced that they had reached a strategic cooperation on interconnection. However, Meituan, which had previously linked with a third party in Tik Tok, seemed to formally bid farewell to Tik Tok and chose to join hands with its competitor Aauto Quicker. But then Tik Tok was not idle. Recently, it upgraded the "same city" on its homepage to a first-class entrance, and made it possible to switch between "exploration" and "learning".
Just below the entrance of "Same City" in Tik Tok, there are categories such as food, leisure, entertainment, etc. These categories all include "time-limited kill" for buying group purchase coupons and "hot list" for viewing local shops. This means that in addition to linking the group purchase coupon link under the short video content, the path for users to reach the group purchase coupon becomes shorter, and the popular merchants can be screened out more intuitively from the hot list of local stores.
at the same time, Tik Tok has also made a series of adjustments on the merchant side. Previously, in March, it launched a platform "Tik Tok Laike" for life service businesses, in which businesses can claim stores, manage group purchases on shelves, promote marketing, write off and withdraw cash, and analyze business data. At that time, Tik Tok had already started the migration of life service businesses that had previously operated Tik Tok Enterprise.
A few days ago, Tik Tok issued a notice to the merchants in the platform, saying that it would "increase the commission" from June 1st and formally bid farewell to the era of "zero service fee". It is understood that Tik Tok used to symbolically charge .6% commission as the payment channel service fee. However, after June, the software service fee will be based on the "actual amount paid by consumers+other subsidies except the self-subsidy of merchants" corresponding to the cancellation coupon code of the current month. According to the rates of different categories of goods, the software service fee (including the payment channel service fee of .6%) is calculated, with an average commission rate of 3%, and the highest "marriage" category will reach 8.
It is worth noting that businesses that have not moved to "Tik Tok Visitors" before June 1st will no longer enjoy the protection period policy, and will not be able to get the rebate of software service fees. Obviously, this move was made by Tik Tok in order to guide the merchants to move from Enterprise to "Tik Tok visitors" as soon as possible.
according to the relevant person in charge of the third-party PMS booking platform, "Tik Tok is integrating the closed-loop transaction of local life, and it is impossible to add calendar room merchants on the platform at present, so we began to guide the wine travel merchants in Tik Tok to change group purchases in batches". In addition, some people close to Tik Tok pointed out that "in the future, Tik Tok Guest App will be the only business platform for Tik Tok life service providers."
Obviously, the act of "taking commission" represents that Tik Tok has already acquired certain bargaining power in the field of local living services. This may also mean that Tik Tok's local life service business, which has been promoted for several years, has gradually matured. After the "profit-making link" of the business expansion period, the platform has the confidence to realize it through this form.
some related businesses pointed out a few days ago that "in the past three years, the write-off rate of group purchase packages in Tik Tok has really increased year by year, and now it is close to 4%". The relevant person in charge of the third-party PMS booking platform also corroborates this view. According to him, "At present, the proportion of calendar room orders in Tik Tok is relatively small, and the proportion of group purchase package sales is high, which is also in line with the instant logic of vibrating pitch traffic".
In addition, data show that the GMV target of Tik Tok local life service business is 2 billion yuan in early 221, and this target has been raised to 4 billion yuan in 222. From then on, it is not difficult to find that the platform side has also placed higher expectations on the local life service business.
But when it comes to Tik Tok's many attempts in local life services, the initial focus is actually not entirely on "group buying".
as early as 22, Tik Tok began to lay out the local life service business, and set up a "local direct business center" to directly target this business line of Meituan. In March of the same year, Tik Tok upgraded its Enterprise number and online group purchase function. At that time, Meituan and Hungry also opened the same city take-out applet in Tik Tok, and linked the ordering entrance on the brand homepage, so users could click directly to jump.
however, this cooperation soon ushered in a change in July 221, which came from Tik Tok's covet of "take-away business". At that time, the small program "Heart-warming Takeaway" was once considered by the outside world as a signal to attack the take-away market on a large scale, and Tik Tok then started the internal test of the take-away function in the live broadcast room in September. However, only one month later, in October, Tik Tok denied the rumor of "launching a takeaway business", and even now it is no longer possible to search for a takeaway.
although we don't know why Tik Tok's take-away business has been dabbling, it obviously hasn't given up the local life service track. And it is worth mentioning that the link of Meituan is no longer displayed on Tik Tok, leaving only "Hungry". There is a view that "it can be seen that Meituan is not satisfied with entering the applet through the search portal, but (with Tik Tok) has been negotiating this cooperation for more than half a year, and it is common sense to speculate that Meituan is bound to hope to obtain a higher level portal than the search portal". As a result, Meituan chose Tik Tok's competitor.
So why are you hungry and now you can link on the Tik Tok platform? You know, if you are hungry, there is only a take-away business at present, and there is no group buying business at the store, which may just prove that it has no direct competition with Tik Tok to do group buying. What's more, the relationship between being hungry and Tencent is also the old saying that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".
as for Tik Tok, there are naturally corresponding considerations for changing from giving up the take-away business to local group buying. At present, its cooperation with Hungry is not too deep, and users who want to enter the Hungry Platform in Tik Tok need to search, click on the link to enter and log in the Hungry Account before placing an order, which is obviously inconvenient.
As for the group buying business in Tik Tok, the "preferential group buying" entrance has been launched since March 221, and in May of the same year, the "Zero Yuan Eating Big Meal" activity was launched to comment on the "overlord meal" by the public. And its recent series of actions are obviously an optimization and upgrade of the existing enterprise number group purchase service. Furthermore, with the content form, interest distribution and traffic blessing in the vibrato platform, the group buying business of eating, drinking and having fun based on geographical location has certain advantages.
Although Tik Tok is engaged in the same group buying business as Meituan, it is obviously far from the former's deep accumulation in local businesses, and because most of them rely on third-party service providers such as Foodism, Lianlian Zhou Bianyou, Enjoy Library Life and Renren Gua, it also means that they may not have direct contact with businesses. The settlement procedure of group purchase in Tik Tok is that "after the group purchase coupon is written off, the commission will first go to Tik Tok, and then return to the third-party service provider, and then the service provider will settle the account for the merchant".
However, for local small and micro businesses, it may be a big expense to entrust a third party to operate Tik Tok on their behalf. However, for chain restaurants or larger businesses, the group coupons sold by Tik Tok may not have much price advantage for the time being.
furthermore, there are also considerable differences in product logic between Tik Tok and Meituan. To put it simply, users almost certainly open the group to buy coupons, which has a more certain demand. However, Tik Tok relies on interest to recommend the sale of group coupons. This suddenness also means that the time for users to use group coupons may be uncertain, which may affect the write-off rate of group coupons.
In addition, with the increase of the commission rate, it may also affect the price of group-buying products and the income of merchants. So how can Tik Tok retain the vast majority of merchants? Therefore, for Tik Tok, who wants to gain a foothold in the local life service field, there may be many problems to be solved next.