The food delivery wars rage on, with no signs of relenting. Alibaba, Meituan, and JD.com are all pulling out all the stops, none willing to cede ground. From boosting subsidies to diversifying strategies, they're all vying for supremacy in this fiercely contested arena. Absent any unforeseen twists, the new rivalry among e-commerce titans, with food delivery as the primary front, will persist, and its outcome will remain unclear in the near term.

Just this past Saturday, the three major food delivery platforms—Meituan, Taobao Flash Sale, and JD.com—issued numerous discount coupons and vouchers, continuing the food delivery frenzy that marked last week's 'Crazy Saturday'. On the afternoon of July 11, JD.com's official WeChat account, JD Bulletin, published an article titled: 'One Price, 16.18! 100,000 Servings Every Night! JD.com Food Delivery Invites Users Nationwide to Enjoy Quality Crayfish.' The article urged users to seek out the 'Instant Delivery' channel on the JD.com app, where 100,000 servings of premium crayfish priced at 16.18 yuan would be available every night. On the evening of July 11, Meituan tweeted: 'Saturday, the fun continues.' Early on July 12, Taobao Flash Sale announced on its official Weibo account that it would offer a 'Super Saturday' voucher pack worth 188 yuan. Faced with the relentless stream of benefits from these players, some netizens quipped that they couldn't eat any more, while others said they couldn't drink any more.

This grand spectacle easily brings to mind past food delivery wars. As we know, those wars were similarly intense and only subsided once a clear market leader emerged. So, is the current food delivery war akin to those of previous years? What kind of market landscape will the e-commerce giants ultimately carve out? The author contends that the current food delivery war is not a traditional one; rather, it's a contest for a new business model. More bluntly, it's a new battleground for instant retail. Clearly, instant retail has become the new frontier for e-commerce giants.

Instant retail is the underlying narrative of this food delivery war

If we recap past food delivery wars, they were essentially a real-world replication of the 'Internet+' model. Ultimately, the battles waged by food delivery players at that time centered more on the food delivery market itself. Observing the current food delivery war, however, reveals that it's more akin to an instant retail war cloaked as a food delivery war.

For e-commerce giants like Alibaba, Meituan, and JD.com, they harbor greater hopes that food delivery will pave the way for a new outlet for instant retail. Through this, e-commerce players will transition from being infrequent and loosely integrated online and offline entities to becoming high-frequency and instant presences. Therefore, if we were to encapsulate and define the current food delivery war, the quest to uncover new breakthroughs and growth points for e-commerce through food delivery wars is undoubtedly the underlying narrative of this new battle.

At this juncture, the divide between e-commerce and food delivery will gradually narrow, and eventually, food delivery will become an integral part of e-commerce. This is actually the most direct manifestation of e-commerce's evolution. For e-commerce giants, only by actively embracing this evolution and genuinely finding a development model that suits them can they truly prevail in this battle. It can be said that the current food delivery war is truly testing the multi-dimensional capabilities of e-commerce players, whether it's in logistics and delivery or user experience, it is actually the 'culmination' of e-commerce players' past experiences.

When we genuinely recognize instant retail as the underlying narrative of this food delivery war and view it as a new phase in the evolution of e-commerce, we can distinguish the current food delivery war from those of the past. Similarly, only by genuinely viewing this food delivery war from this perspective can we truly appreciate why players like Alibaba, Meituan, and JD.com are unwilling to easily retreat.

Instant retail represents the new evolution of e-commerce

Traditionally, there are indeed many differences between e-commerce and food delivery. In many instances, e-commerce diverges from food delivery in terms of frequency, timeliness, and online-offline integration. However, as the e-commerce industry enters a period of transformation, particularly when more players start joining this evolution, the gap between e-commerce and food delivery begins to narrow. For example, when Meituan and JD.com first embarked on their food delivery wars, some believed that one of the key reasons JD.com ventured into food delivery was because Meituan's reach had extended into JD.com's turf. Conversely, after JD.com joined the fray, some also argued that JD.com's presence had encroached upon Meituan's heartland.

Regardless of which narrative, they all convey a common message: the gap between e-commerce and food delivery is starting to close, especially when food delivery begins to embody the essence and significance of 'instant retail,' this phenomenon becomes even more pronounced. Therefore, when we consider today's food delivery wars, we shouldn't view food delivery as merely traditional food delivery; it's more like a new model of instant retail. Simultaneously, instant retail is also a major direction for the evolution of e-commerce players.

When food delivery giants and e-commerce giants clash on the new battlefield of instant retail, a brand-new battle becomes inevitable. Thus, from this perspective, instant retail is actually the new evolution of e-commerce. Through instant retail, e-commerce transcends its traditional model and becomes an omnipresent force that can be realized anytime and anywhere. It can be said that the instant retail war epitomized by food delivery is a new manifestation of the e-commerce war in the new stage of e-commerce evolution, and it represents more of a new upgrade for e-commerce.

For e-commerce players, they need to better cater to consumers' instant consumption needs, discover more effective ways and means for online-offline integration, and engage more deeply in the e-commerce industry. Only in this manner can they remain unassailable on the new e-commerce battleground, which is instant retail.

Instant retail is about discovering new growth within the existing market

For every e-commerce player, it's all about continually uncovering new growth within the market. This is reflected not only in new user growth but also in new industry growth. If we were to encapsulate and define the ongoing food delivery war, it's more akin to e-commerce players discovering new growth within the existing market through instant retail. Regarding this, The Beijing News once bluntly pointed out that the reason why the three major platforms of Alibaba, Meituan, and JD.com have exhibited immense enthusiasm for the 'food delivery war' is that it's not a do-or-die struggle for the existing market. Behind the 'food delivery war' lies a tangible and substantial consumer growth market.

According to The Beijing News' analysis, traditional e-commerce involves 'buy online, deliver by courier,' typically used for durable goods or items that can wait. However, instant retail addresses people's immediate needs of 'want it now, have it nearby,' covering a vast array of offline consumption behaviors that haven't been encompassed by e-commerce in the past. At the same time, this consumption behavior isn't simply shifting transactions from community stores to online.

The essence of business lies in achieving profitability by more efficiently meeting consumer demand, and the satisfaction of demand is linked to people's sense of gain and happiness. The rapid growth of instant retail goes hand in hand with enhancing the overall well-being of the people. The clarity of the incremental market is the core reason why several platforms have intensified their efforts in the 'food delivery war.' On one hand, there's no room for error in facing the future market; on the other hand, even if a platform loses in the 'war,' it still stands to gain. It can leverage the massive transactions to foster users' 'awakening' to the instant retail model, accelerate the development of the rider team, expedite the layout of outlet warehousing, and realize the localization of supply chain extension capabilities.

In fact, it's not just that. The instant retail war ignited by the food delivery war reveals more about the general trend of e-commerce players discovering new growth within the existing market. We all know that after the mobile internet era's baptism, the e-commerce market has entered an era of stock. Even so, for every e-commerce player, only by continually uncovering new growth can they continue to thrive. And instant retail just opens such a window, through which e-commerce players have discovered new market demands and thus new growth.

Moreover, the ongoing food delivery war is actually more akin to a new beginning for e-commerce players to crystallize their past experiences and capabilities and outline their future layouts. On one hand, e-commerce players can apply the capabilities they've accumulated in various aspects during the mobile internet era to this brand-new battleground; on the other hand, e-commerce players can utilize this instant retail war to lay the 'infrastructure' for the next new business era. Whether it's the enhancement of delivery capabilities based on instant retail or the construction of their own supply chain, they are almost direct manifestations of this phenomenon. This is also a tangible embodiment of discovering new growth within the existing market.

Final Thoughts

The food delivery wars rage on, with each player unwilling to easily retreat. If we view it solely from the lens of a food delivery war, we actually can't truly fathom the deeper significance of such a war. In reality, instant retail is the underlying narrative of this food delivery war. At the same time, instant retail is also a new manifestation of e-commerce's evolution. In this battle, we witness new growth within the existing market, and we see even more of the new offerings from internet players to meet the evolving needs of the general public.