Two or three days before the start of school, other members of the team returned to school one after another. Lin Yi, Li Moyan, and Li Jianguo treated everyone to a meal as a team building to start the new year.
Based on the previous discussion between the three of them, they each observed a few people, especially if they felt that their mentality might change. Sure enough, after returning one year later, some people came to them and asked to resign.
Of course, Lin Yi and the others tried their best to retain them. After all, it is not easy to find cheap and easy-to-use skilled workers these days, but those who had already decided to leave were not forced to do so.
Fortunately, at least the backbones like Shao Yu, Wang Yuqi and Zhang Xun are all firm in their stance, so this team is still relatively complete and its combat effectiveness has basically not been affected.
On this side, they are still here to stabilize their morale, while on the other side, the offensive that they have been worried about for a long time since the beginning of the year has finally taken off.
What’s interesting is that Are You Hungry is not just any food delivery website where both employees and consumer groups are composed of students? They are a completely social enterprise and have resumed normal operations long after the Spring Festival.
But they chose the day when school started to officially announce a new round of discounts. Not only was it aggressive, but it was completely tit-for-tat. It is self-evident as to who it was targeted at.
"How do they promote it?"
Lin Yi was relatively calm, after all, it was an expected thing.
Li Jianguo directly handed a leaflet to him and Li Moyan: "I received it in the dormitory today. They were very efficient and just stuffed it in and left. It spread throughout the school within a day."
Jingdian is the home base of their casual food delivery network, so this is nothing more than a direct slap in the face.
Lin Yi picked up the flyer and glanced at it. It was well-printed with white letters on a blue background and exuded a sense of sufficient funding. It had words such as "Breaking News" and "Back-to-School Specials" written in bold fonts.
"How exactly is the subsidy provided?"
This question is not difficult to answer. They just take out their mobile phones and place an order directly on Are You Hungry?
After observing, Lin Yi discovered that Hungry Me had made some discounts on delivery fees, and then gathered a group of merchants to hold an event. Not only did Hungry Me offer discounts on recent orders, but they also received free drinks from Hungry Me.
These things seem to have a discount of about four or five yuan on the order, but in fact the cost from Are You Hungry is only two or three yuan at most?
Quite a few.
College students have relatively limited financial capabilities and are price-sensitive consumers, meaning they love petty gains and have no brand loyalty. The temptation of two or three dollars is enough to influence consumer choices.
Li Jianguo was a little worried, but Lin Yi had seen big winds and waves after all: "What's wrong with posting two or three yuan per order? From now on, you haven't seen it when they post ten yuan per order for almost nothing."
Even Li Moyan couldn't believe this: "I did some calculations and found out that with this level of subsidy, we can no longer make a profit. In other words, we are losing money delivering food to consumers. They can't be any better than us."
"It's ten yuan per order. Is that a lot of money to burn?"
To put it this way, it is really burning, and it is burning a lot. It is quite enjoyable to think about spending investors' money to occupy the market.
Those things are too far away for now, so we can only focus on the present.
Li Jianguo asked: "What should we do? There is not much money in the account now. If we follow, we won't last long."
"Can't follow."
Lin Yi calmed down and said, "Don't let the other party disrupt the rhythm. The current situation is that the other party has stronger funds than us, and subsidy is a dead end. This is the result they expect."
"We originally have a small advantage in terms of price. We can wait and see for a while to see how much impact it has on us. In addition, we have to make money quickly."
Facts have proved that Lin Yi's inference still makes some sense.
Although the order volume of Yiyi Takeout.com has not reached the peak level of a year ago due to the impact of the subsidies provided by Hungry? after the start of school, it is not an exaggerated drop.
After a round of investigation, they found that many students still care about the convenience of having meals delivered to their dormitories, especially girls.
Someone has done a market survey and found that the consumption power of female college students is obviously stronger than that of male college students, so they are relatively less sensitive to prices. Moreover, many female college students do not drink high-sugar drinks for the purpose of body management.
No wonder everyone wants to do women's business.
But before Lin Yi and the others could rejoice for too long, another news came from Li Moyan, which she got from the merchant.
"Are you hungry? We are negotiating with merchants that if we sign an exclusive agreement with them, we can get priority recommendations and have more opportunities to participate in various preferential activities."
The so-called exclusive agreement means that as long as a merchant is online on the Hungry Me website, it cannot be online on the Yiyi Takeout website.
In fact, it is to use existing industry advantages to implement a disguised "choose one of two" overlord clause.
However, at this time, Hungry? did not have as strong a market position as another leading company later, and could directly force merchants to "choose one of the two".
"Although the impact on us is relatively small at present, especially merchants with large sales here are reluctant to give up these orders easily."
"But in the long run, if the gap between the order scales between the two sides further widens, some merchants will inevitably be tempted to choose the bigger one over the smaller ones."
This move is a bit of a waste of money. If there are no online merchants for their casual takeout, there will be no place for consumers to support them if they want to.
"Are you hungry? You still think highly of us. Xiao Xiami, who has never done a serious round of financing like us, even used a set of combo punches on us."
Lin Yi's "flattered" performance did not appease his two partners. Li Moyan and Li Jianguo both looked stern.
When Hungry.me was developing in Shanghai in the early days, it actually encountered teams that were richer than them. At that time, they also adopted the money-burning subsidy tactic. However, in the end, Hungry.me relied on solving pain points for merchants and using better users.
Experience wins the market.
Lin Yi speculated that this may be the reason why they did not rely on superstitious subsidies, but adopted a multi-pronged approach.
He thought for a while and said: "For the core merchants with a high proportion of sales on our website, we must attract them and give them some benefits appropriately."
"Aren't we hungry? If we don't have enough money to provide direct subsidies, we can make it easier on other things, such as the priority of delivery. In fact, the fixed fees of merchants are not out of the question."
"Compared with profits at this stage, we need to retain users more. No matter which end of the user they are, merchants and consumers cannot lose."
"As for those marginal merchants who really want to switch to Hungry, don't worry too much. The merchant coverage of Yiwai Waiwai.com is not as good as it, because our online time is too short, so these impacts are relatively limited."
However, these are all measures that treat the symptoms rather than the root cause. How can just being beaten without fighting back be a long-term solution?
"Money, money, it's really a penny that can stump a heroic man!"