The release of the iPhone 16 has ignited a war on the instant retail track.
In the early morning of September 10, the new iPhone 16 was officially unveiled at Apple's 2024 autumn new product launch conference. Early in the morning of September 10th, Ele.me announced that it would join hands with nearly 4,000 Apple authorized stores this year to support the simultaneous pre-sale and spot sale of new iPhone 16 products. On the day of the first spot launch of the new machine, Ele.me consumers can harvest the new machine within half an hour at the earliest.
This isn't the first time consumers have been able to buy iPhones through instant retail platforms. Since last year, various instant retail platforms such as Ele.me, Meituan, and Hema have begun to seize the mind of the iPhone new product release channel.
This year, the fighting has escalated further.
The number of Apple authorized stores that Ele.me has partnered with has increased from nearly 3,000 last year to nearly 4,000. At the same time, Ele.me also supports the pre-sale of new products for the first time. At 8 p.m. on September 13, consumers can pay the full amount in advance at Apple's officially authorized franchise stores on Ele.me to lock in new products and make an appointment for delivery at the same time. In addition, this year, Ele.me also joined forces with Huabei to launch 3, 6 and 12 interest-free options for the full range of Apple's new products.
While various instant retail platforms continue to increase resources around the release of new iPhone phones, more and more digital 3C brands have also begun to embrace instant retail platforms as an important channel for new product launches. Mobile phone brands such as Xiaomi, Huawei, OPPO, and vivo have been exploring new scenarios through instant retail in recent years.
It is no exaggeration to say that instant retail has become a new blockbuster battlefield for the release of 3C new products.
What is the 3C category of Ele.me?
Instant retail platforms were the first to start with food delivery and fresh food categories, and they have a characteristic, that is, concentrated demand and low customer unit price, which poses a huge test to the fulfillment cost and experience. The capacity is insufficient during peak periods, and the timeliness is difficult to guarantee; There are not enough orders in the spare time, and the utilization efficiency of transportation capacity is not high.
Expanding other categories with relatively scattered demand can not only supplement the orders in the spare time, make full use of the platform's capacity, but also reduce distribution costs through the increase of order density. And digital 3C is the most suitable category.
More, faster, better and less economical are the eternal needs of users for e-commerce platforms. The demand for a faster delivery experience is natural, but just-in-time retail has been seen as a supplement to traditional e-commerce in the past.
One of the core reasons for this situation is that the high delivery cost "dissuades" many users.
High fulfillment fees discourage many potential users, and the lack of order density makes it difficult to reduce fulfillment costs. It's a chicken-and-egg question, and how can we break the game?
The digital 3C category is a good breakthrough. Digital 3C products have the characteristics of high customer unit value, compared with low customer order products, delivery costs are not a priority factor for consumers when making purchase decisions. At the same time, digital 3C products are still standardized SKUs, and after-sales quality and matching problems are rare, which is naturally suitable for quick decision-making online. All these make the digital 3C category highly suitable for the instant retail platform.
In addition, digital 3C products have certain trend attributes, and users have a strong early adopter psychology when new products are released, and the instant retail platform can just meet this user demand well. Therefore, it has become a common choice for instant retail platforms to launch new products as a breakthrough to open up the digital 3C category, and then establish the user mind of "instant retail, everything can be purchased".
After all, for consumers, such a high unit price of goods can be purchased with confidence on the instant retail platform, so what else can not be bought with confidence?
As the industry's appeal benchmark that has triggered a nationwide rush to buy many times, the iPhone has naturally become the "Normandy" of platforms such as Ele.me to seize the digital 3C category.
The two-way rush between 3C enterprises and instant retail
While the takeaway platform is seizing the 3C category, digital 3C companies are also taking the initiative to embrace instant retail, which is a two-way rush.
According to GfK China's global monitoring data, the global home appliance and consumer electronics market size in the first three quarters of 2023 was US$586 billion, down 4.7% year-on-year. The Chinese market performed slightly better, with an overall positive growth of 4.1%. Among them, consumer electronics, major appliances, and small household appliances increased by 2.9%, 2.1%, and 5.4% year-on-year respectively, and the overall growth rate slowed down.
In the case of the overall slowdown in the growth rate of the market, how to find new increments has become a problem that all household appliance 3C companies have to think about.
At the same time, data shows that since 2021, the scale of the consumer electronics market in the instant retail channel is growing rapidly, and it is expected to reach 150.5 billion yuan in 2026, nearly 15 times that of 2021, with a compound annual growth rate of 68.5%.
In other words, the instant retail platform is one of the few channels for digital 3C companies that still have growth dividends.
The core consumer group of digital 3C products is mainly young people. In the fast-paced life, today's young people pursue "self-pleasing" and "instant gratification", and they are accustomed to making quick decisions and enjoying them immediately on instant retail platforms. The core user groups of the two are highly matched.
By embracing real-time retail platforms, digital 3C companies are also embracing young users. And grabbing young users is not only winning in the present, but also equivalent to seizing the future.
What are the killer moves of the platform to seize the 3C category?
In the competition of traditional e-commerce platforms, low prices are always the invincible killer feature. However, in the instant retail format, "fast", which represents instant gratification, is the core demand of users. This requires the platform to have strong and stable fulfillment capabilities to ensure the timeliness and experience of delivery.
As one of the core assets of the platform, Ele.me's Hummingbird has more than 4 million active riders, promoted the construction of a logistics supercomputing platform, and built a new Blue Knight development and support system, which can build and optimize technical directions such as spatio-temporal intelligence, intelligent scheduling, and path planning, helping riders reduce the uncertainty of delivery routes, improve the order completion rate and follow-up rate of riders' orders, and provide consumers with a high-efficiency and low-cost experience.
"Fast" is only the basic skill of the instant retail platform, and to cover all categories, the instant retail platform should also have the fulfillment ability to provide specialized delivery solutions for different categories.
Taking digital 3C products as an example, due to their high customer unit price, when users make purchase decisions, in addition to fast delivery, safety is also the core factor to consider. For example, if the price of a brand new iPhone is 7-8000 yuan, users will inevitably worry about what to do if it is lost or sent wrong? Therefore, it is very important to dispel consumers' worries in the purchase and delivery process.
To this end, Ele.me has specially introduced relevant measures to protect it. According to reports, when consumers buy a new iPhone at Ele.me, the platform will use a signature code to ensure the matching of people and goods. In addition, in order to ensure the consumer experience, Ele.me has also launched customized delivery services including sealed packaging and special delivery.
Relying on the excellent service experience, Ele.me has already attracted many digital 3C brands and offline channel cooperation. In May last year, Ele.me and Suning Tesco announced that they had reached a strategic cooperation, and the first batch of 600 stores of Suning Tesco across the country had completed the settlement of Ele.me, covering more than 150 cities; In September 2022, Ele.me and Xiaomi Group announced that they had reached a cooperation, and more than 3,000 "Xiaomi Home" stores across the country have successively launched the Ele.me platform, so that consumers can buy various Xiaomi digital electronic products such as mobile phones, power banks, and rice cookers anytime and anywhere.
The era of "everything can be delivered" is accelerating
According to the Ministry of Commerce's "Instant Retail Industry Development Report (2023)", the market size of the instant retail industry will reach 504.286 billion yuan in 2022, with an average annual growth rate of more than 50% in recent years, and the market size is expected to triple by 2025.
In order to seize the rapid growth cycle and accelerate the establishment of a user mentality that "everything can be taken out", in addition to the digital 3C category, Ele.me is also vigorously expanding more categories and scenarios.
For example, in the summer of this year, Ele.me united with 50,000 retail stores to provide consumers across the country with tens of millions of ice cups that can be purchased for 0.01 yuan. Before and after the summer heat, the takeaway volume of Ele.me ice cups increased by 350% year-on-year.
In response to the peak of gift-giving such as Qixi Festival, Ele.me has launched a one-stop "hosting" service, where consumers can customize their own anniversary reminders in the "Flowers and Gifts" channel, customize gifts and give them to gift recipients.
In addition, "24-hour convenience stores" are also one of the key scenarios that instant retail platforms such as Ele.me are working on.
According to the 2024 China Convenience Store Development Report jointly released by KPMG China and the China Chain Store Association, the number of stores in China's convenience store industry exceeded 321,000 in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 7%, and one-third of the sample enterprises launched instant retail business. The all-weather business model has now become a new direction for the development of various convenience stores, and the instant retail platform represented by Ele.me is one of the important driving forces behind it.
As of July this year, 1 out of every 3 convenience stores on the Ele.me platform offered 24-hour service. The number of 24-hour convenience stores increased by 52% year-on-year, which was higher than the overall growth of convenience stores. Brands such as Lawson, 7-Eleven, FamilyMart, Meiyijia, and Dushi have the highest number of 24-hour stores.
From Ele.me buying iPhones to "24-hour convenience stores", these are just a microcosm of the booming instant retail. With the increasing demand of young consumers for "instant gratification" and the reduction of fulfillment costs due to the increase in order density, instant retail will cover more and more categories and scenarios.
The era of "everything can be delivered" is accelerating. Leifeng Net, Leifeng Net, Leifeng Net