Chapter 432: Finished, Take Off
The sun shines obliquely through the clouds, ushering in a new day with the morning light.
The group buying division sent out one van after another, carrying one bread earner after another, and a team headed to the forefront of the group buying market, which is Lashou’s current key business district.
There was another team that was conducting guerrilla warfare throughout the city while driving around on the phone.
"Boss Tang, do you still remember me?"
"You are...Manager Zhu?"
"Yes, after half a year, our business area has finally been expanded, and our in-depth cooperation agreement has officially come into effect."
“…”
The first people to discover that something was wrong were the employees of Lashou.com's Public Opinion Department, whose important job was to monitor other competing websites.
On the afternoon of the 12th, the homepage of the group buying website suddenly launched an event called the Online Food Festival. The date of this event was marked as starting three days later, and all items were 40% off.
Before the food festival started, the first wave of activities was to grab coupons online. Consumers could grab coupons for additional discounts, tickets for post-meal draws, and even fragments of free meal coupons.
What does fragmentation mean?
That is, several pictures added together can become one picture.
However, Jiang Qin’s way of playing with fragments is different from that of later generations. Their fragments can be used together by several people.
For example, you drew three fragments, I drew two, and someone else drew four... every twenty free fragments can be counted as one.
If everyone is having a meal together, one free meal coupon can offset 300 yuan. As for how to use it, it is entirely up to the consumer.
The lottery method can be the website prize pool, Zhihu lottery post, group buying fan group, or the group buying official WeChat message and mobile phone text message.
The people in the marketing department printed out the event page and submitted it, which immediately made the people at Lashou.com and Nuomi.com very angry.
Why don't you just issue coupons? Why don't you just issue them directly? Why do you issue fragments? What kind of a trick is this?
To be honest, Lashou.com and Nuomituan have previously offered free meals and free purchases in order to attract consumers.
However, due to cost considerations, very few people can actually get the free meal coupons, and it is difficult to maintain the popularity. On the contrary, the effect is not as good as the 40% and 70% off coupons.
But no matter how hard they thought, they could not imagine that a ticket could be broken into twenty pieces and everyone came together to grab them.
“The dog really moves a lot.”
"But this is also good news, which means that the group-buying push can no longer hold up."
"Yes, that's right."
"They hold this food festival to attract users, but it is also like putting a target in front of us. As long as we offer targeted discounts to merchants participating in the food festival, and the discount is less than 40%, their event will definitely not be able to continue."
"Yes, the funds will be almost in place in three days. We have the right time, right place, and right people."
Organizing activities is a stage for attracting new customers. Choosing to hold such an activity at this time shows that the ground-based promotion of group buying can no longer sustain.
This means that their coverage area will not expand during the event.
You can shoot at fixed targets with your feet.
But what happened next was far beyond their expectations.
On Wednesday afternoon, the online food festival event of the group buying had warmed up to its peak, and the first batch of merchants participating in the discount were officially listed.
But what no one expected was that these merchants were not within the current coverage of group buying, but were spread all over Shanghai, in every corner, even in their key commercial areas.
"Boss Luo, Boss Luo, something is not right. Something is not right."
"What's wrong?"
“The number of users who came online during the group-buying food festival…can’t be said to be different from what we expected, but it can only be said to be completely unrelated.”
"?"
The managers who received the notice quickly came to the conference room. At this time, the projector was turned on, and the first wave of merchants on the group buying food list were projected onto the white screen.
At this moment, everyone opened their eyes wide, feeling stunned and horrified.
The businesses put on the shelves in this wave are not the merchants that had signed contracts within their business scope before the group buying, but some brand new chain catering companies.
These chain enterprises include local and foreign ones, and all of them are brands with very large market in Shanghai. Moreover, they have their own exclusive stores in every district and every business district.
According to the coupon usage rules currently announced by the group buying service, consumers who receive the coupons can choose to use them at the nearest store.
In other words, this group buying activity is leveraging the layout of these chain enterprises to extend its tentacles to all corners of Shanghai, except for some remote suburbs.
At this time, there is no such thing as your business area or my business area. Consumers all over Shanghai are participating.
"impossible!"
Robin slammed the table and said, "How many chain restaurants are there here? More than 20, involving more than 100 stores. It would take at least half a year to handle such a large scale. When did they discuss the cooperation?"
As the field sales manager, Wu Peng was the most familiar with the entire front line and immediately said, "In the past week, all of them have been running field sales. This can only be magic."
“Unless they have a team hidden in the dark that is specifically responsible for negotiations with chain brands.”
"That's impossible. The time is too short. The last time we negotiated with Hilton, it took us four months to reach an agreement. They wanted to go the high-end brand route and initially disagreed with the price reduction offer because they felt it would damage their high-end image."
At this moment, Cui Yiting, who was sitting on the right side of the conference table, opened her mouth wide. The five big words "Group Buying Food Festival" seemed to have turned into needles and pierced into her brain, making her entire head start to buzz.
This is not the first time she has seen group buying food festivals.
But she could never have imagined that this thing would fly out like a boomerang and then hit her back with pain.
"These cooperative brands were negotiated by them when Lashou.com first came to Shanghai..."
"?"
Cui Yiting took a deep breath and immediately opened a compressed package stored in drive D, which contained some information from the Sui Xin Tuan period.
She found the folder marked with the last time period, then opened the photo library and quickly searched through it, finally picking up her laptop and connecting it to the projector.
The picture on the screen changed to a photo of a huge group-buying food list.
"At that time, Lashou had just come to Shanghai to develop the market, and it was led by Mr. Kang's team. Their entry route was similar to that of Pintuan now, but because the surrounding university towns were within Pintuan's business scope, they were targeted by Pintuan."
"At the time, Mr. Kang wanted to clean up the area and sent many specialists to visit the market and talk to merchants."
"They helped those merchants deliver goods and set up stalls, but only after the signs were hung up did they realize they had been defrauded. What they helped to set up was an offline food festival for group buying."
"Boss Kang...maybe he felt it was too embarrassing, so he didn't tell anyone. Only those of us who have worked in the front-line market know about this."
"I also went to the food festival to join in the fun. Group Buying provided them with the venue and publicity without charging any fees. At that time, many brands signed their food festival cooperation agreements for the student market."
"Later, Lashou.com and Nuomi.com continued to take action against Suixintuan, and Pintuan also held three food festivals in the university town during this period."
Cui Yiting finished telling everyone what she knew, and no one at the scene was not confused or numb.
The direction of the world line is dynamic and multi-directional, not single. Cui Yiting's words are very simple. You don't really think that when Nuomi and Lashou targeted Suixintuan, Pintuan stayed in the university town and did nothing, right? Three minutes later, the managers who were frozen in place came to their senses, looked at each other, and were speechless for a long time.
In other words, the group organized an offline food festival, leveraging the overall consumption capacity of the university town to attract many chain restaurant brands.
From fast food fried chicken to hot pot and restaurants, they all took the initiative to find them.
Why? Because college students are poor, but they dare to spend money when they have it.
After the food festival ended, all brands saw a rapid increase in customer base, allowing everyone to reap the benefits.
Moreover, Pintuan did not sign a contract with them in the name of online group buying, but instead signed a cooperation agreement for a separate project called Food Festival.
Now, the food festival has moved from offline to online, and all offline stores have become their online channels.
Wu Peng suddenly raised his head: "This will make it difficult to fight..."
If the business scope of group buying is still small, then an event worth 1.2 million yuan can definitely deal a serious blow to them.
But now they are scattered in every corner, how can you deal with them? There is a price war in Shanghai, what can you do with 1.2 million?
“We can only wait until their activities are over.”
"After the event, their marketing team took a break and started to push again. Do we have to wait for them for another week? What else can we do? We can just give up the market."
Robin was silent for a while before speaking: "Actually, we don't need to follow the steps of this group purchase to make arrangements. What do you think?"
Cui Yiting was silent for a moment and then spoke: "There is really no need to focus on the new business areas of group buying. Our activities only need to target their key business areas."
Wu Peng nodded: "Yiting is right, let's just pretend that we have never held this activity. We will still target Yangpu and Huangpu. We will start now as we planned before."
"Yes, we still have a chance. As long as we severely damage their main business areas, group buying will not be able to hold on."
"After all, it's just a small website. They used speed to confuse us at the beginning, but as long as we focus on their core, we can still win in one blow."
After the afternoon meeting, everyone stopped paying attention to the group's movements and focused on planning a decapitation campaign, intending to deal a heavy blow to the group.
But not long after, something even more unexpected happened to them again.
They found themselves without a chance.
On Friday evening, the food festival had just begun and the activity of collecting free food coupons began to become popular among the white-collar workers.
Having signed so many merchants in the early stages of group buying, at this moment we finally ushered in a promotion targeting this user group.
But what caught Lashou.com off guard was that the number of merchants participating in group buying is still increasing rapidly, with no signs of stopping. In just two days, the number of participating stores in the online food festival exceeded 200.
Moreover, apart from the food sector, the basic base of group buying is still expanding infinitely.
For example, several major business districts in Xuhui have always been the focus of major websites. However, just as the food festival started, several of the most popular stores in these business districts inexplicably closed, and some even proactively refunded the entry fees.
At the same time, several cinemas, KTVs and other entertainment venues also gave up their cooperation with Lashou and Nuomi and officially joined the group buying platform.
After receiving this news, everyone at Lashou.com was immediately stunned.
In a complete commercial district, catering and entertainment are very important because they are tools to attract customer flow. Without them, the customer flow would be reduced by more than half.
For group buying websites, these stores are also the key to increasing daily active users.
They had already prepared to deal a heavy blow to the group, but what they got was a heavy blow from the group, which was something no one had expected.
Do you think group buying activities mean slowing down? No, it is preparing for a grand take-off, like pulling up onions from dry land.
(End of this chapter)
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