Returning to an Offensive Stance.

Over three months ago, when JD.com ventured into the food delivery market, few anticipated the chain reactions that would lead to a revival of the food delivery war years later.

However, from the current perspective, market focus has shifted from JD.com to Taobao Flash Sale.

Just over the weekend, the trending topics of Taobao Flash Sale and Meituan Food Delivery surged on search lists again. Numerous netizens shared their latest food delivery subsidy "achievements" on social media, including inexpensive or even free coffee and tea.

Behind this wave of enthusiasm lies Alibaba's fierce offensive in the instant retail arena. Since May, Taobao upgraded its "hour-long delivery" to "Taobao Flash Sale" and launched a series of subsidy activities in partnership with Ele.me. As July arrived, with the official launch of the Flash Sale's 50 billion subsidy plan, the food delivery war heated up significantly.

Looking back at the rise of Taobao Flash Sale, many initially underestimated Alibaba's resolve to develop instant retail. When Taobao Flash Sale first introduced a top-level entry on the main Taobao App, it sparked widespread discussion. At that time, there was widespread skepticism: Since Ele.me already existed, why recreate a "Flash Sale" within the main Taobao App?

Now, the intensity and sustainability of this strategic investment far exceed expectations.

From the significant volume at launch to the current daily order volume exceeding 80 million, investment has remained robust. Recently, news spread that Wang Shuai, Alibaba's former top PR executive, has returned as a consultant to assist in the Flash Sale business. Shortly after, Jack Ma personally entered the battlefield to oversee operations, sending a clear signal: The aggressive Alibaba that emphasizes offense, excels at integrating resources, and dares to invest seems to be back.

This instant retail war, ignited by JD.com's entry and pushed to a climax by Alibaba's Taobao Flash Sale, goes beyond mere food delivery. It's about competing for users' high-frequency consumption habits, the digital connection of millions of offline merchants, and the re-establishment of a future "everything to your door" ecosystem.

Shifting from passive defense to proactive attack, Alibaba aims to regain the initiative in instant retail.

01

Past of Passive Defense:

Alibaba's Decade-Long Struggle in Instant Retail

Before the launch of Taobao Flash Sale, the situation was entirely different. In the field of instant retail, Alibaba had long been in a defensive state.

This was due to several reasons. First, internal businesses operated independently and even clashed. Ele.me (food delivery), Taoxianda (fresh produce), Hema (supermarkets), etc., belonged to different business groups, preventing resource integration.

If users wanted to purchase "hour-long delivery" products, they had to search on Taobao and then navigate elsewhere, resulting in a fragmented process. In contrast, Meituan achieved "food delivery + flash purchase" one-stop service as early as 2018, and JD.com also integrated "JD.com to home + hour-long delivery" to form a unified entry.

Secondly, instant retail had not been a core battleground for Alibaba for a long time, and the instant retail strategy underwent multiple internal adjustments over the past decade, all disrupted by poor execution:

From the birth of Hema as a "new retail benchmark" in 2016, but the heavy asset model was difficult to scale; followed by the establishment of the city retail business group, which dissolved within three years due to internal competition; similarly, Taoxianda and Taocaicai merged into "Taobao Shopping" and quickly shut down the business.

Frequent organizational changes prevented resource accumulation, disrupting strategic continuity.

Until 2024, although Taobao conducted a gray test of the "hour-long delivery" entry on the homepage, traffic support was limited. Compared to JD.com designating instant retail as a "must-win battle" and Meituan investing hundreds of billions to consolidate its delivery network, instant retail at that time was still not considered a strategic-level business for Alibaba.

"Retail needs to deal with people, and technology cannot solve problems between people," according to industry insiders. Meituan's ground promotion team and rider management system have been refined through actual combat, while Alibaba's laid-back culture has led to weak front-line execution capabilities, making it difficult to support the "dirty and tiring work" required for instant retail. Moreover, for such a giant company, cross-business group integration may be the most challenging task itself.

The past few years were a critical stage for Meituan to widen the gap with other players. However, at that time, Alibaba was busy combating the rise of Pinduoduo and had to divert resources to defensive businesses.

Internally, instant retail was viewed as an "extension of food delivery" rather than an independent ecosystem. Compared to "near-field retail" within a 3-kilometer range, "mid-field/far-field e-commerce" as the core business was the work center for the entire organization.

Insufficient investment and lack of a prominent entry point, coupled with various factors, led to Ele.me, which has long relied on independent App operations, having a daily order volume of less than half that of Meituan. Due to its separation from Taobao's 1 billion user pool, it could not leverage Taobao users' advantages.

Additionally, Taobao users are accustomed to traditional e-commerce delivery within three days, with weak awareness of immediacy - "fast" has not been able to become Taobao's core label.

02 From Defense to Offense: Transforming Motivation and Strategic Integration

The question arises: Why has Alibaba's focus on instant retail surged after JD.com launched its food delivery efforts this year, with Jack Ma personally overseeing the battle and setting volume targets just over three months later?

The direct trigger is the "convergence effect" of delivery timeliness: The timeliness gap between mid-field retail (next-day/second-day delivery) and near-field retail (instant delivery within 1 hour) is constantly narrowing.

Driving this transformation is the upgrading of consumer demand, forcing a leap in supply chain efficiency, as well as the strategic game of platforms competing for control of urban consumption scenarios.

As more consumers are willing to pay a premium for timeliness, beyond catering, the demand for 30-minute delivery of fresh produce, medicine, and other categories is constantly increasing. Changes in demand are also forcing the retail model to shift from "planned stockpiling" to "instant replenishment".

More importantly, if users become accustomed to shifting from online shopping to instant retail, the core value of e-commerce platforms will be challenged:

After high-frequency products are instantly satisfied, low-frequency products may also gradually be included in the instant retail system, potentially rendering traditional e-commerce obsolete - this is the most critical issue.

From this perspective, the layout of instant retail by traditional e-commerce platforms is tied to the competition for the "ultimate form of retail," satisfying all user needs with the shortest time and highest efficiency.

As delivery timeliness moves from "hourly" to "minute-level" and category coverage expands from "catering" to "everything," the outcome of the competition, besides redistributing market share, may also reconstruct the relationship between "people, goods, and locations."

In fact, every significant breakthrough in Alibaba's history has often been accompanied by deep resource integration.

When Taobao was established in 2003, it disrupted eBay EachNet's commission model through a free strategy, essentially combining the resources of small and medium-sized enterprises accumulated in B2B with the user traffic of C2C. The establishment of Cainiao Network in 2013 integrated the e-commerce traffic and logistics resources of Taobao and Tmall to build a nationwide distribution network.

Now, to win this battle, Taobao Flash Sale is playing at a higher level.

Starting from the second half of this year, Ele.me and Fliggy have been integrated into Alibaba's China E-commerce Business Group, forming an iron triangle of "Taobao and Tmall merchandise supply + Ele.me fulfillment + Fliggy scenarios." This integration not only breaks the fragmented situation of past business lines but also seamlessly connects the "far field" of e-commerce with the "near field" of local life.

Beyond organizational restructuring, Taobao Flash Sale directly leverages the resources of millions of merchants from Ele.me and accesses the merchandise pool of Taobao and Tmall. With resource synergy, Taobao Flash Sale exceeded 80 million daily orders within two months of launch, effectively creating another "Ele.me".

Since July, with the official launch of Taobao Flash Sale's 50 billion subsidy plan, spanning a year, unlike Meituan's "bid ranking + high commission" model, Flash Sale's 50 billion subsidies operate on a dual track of "platform direct subsidies + merchant concessions." For instance, commission-free and delivery subsidies are offered to some small and medium-sized merchants, while users are enticed with highly perceptible subsidies like "0.1 yuan milk tea" and "1 yuan fast food" to place orders.

In the subsidy war last weekend, Flash Sale launched the "Super Saturday" event, where users could receive a 188 yuan red envelope every Saturday, usable for catering, fresh produce, supermarkets, and other products. Simultaneously, the "free card" event continued to compete with Meituan's "Super Snatcher" and "Daily Divine Coupons."

Against this backdrop, the order volume of the entire food delivery market has seen explosive growth. Taobao Flash Sale and Ele.me jointly announced that the daily order volume has exceeded 80 million, with daily active users surpassing 200 million; Meituan's daily retail orders reached 150 million.

The food delivery war has officially entered a white-hot stage.

03 Behind the Subsidy Frenzy: Long-Term Test of Instant Retail

It's crucial to note that the current growth in order volume is primarily driven by subsidies, and it remains uncertain whether the order volume will remain stable once subsidies end.

Previously, industry insiders stated that continuous subsidies consume platforms' cash flow and profits, and these resources are finite. Secondly, the effect of subsidies diminishes over time. The new users brought in by continuous subsidies become fewer, with no real increase in repurchase rates and user loyalty. The short-term and long-term benefits of subsidies are limited.

In the short term, giants have sufficient cash flow, and subsidies will continue for some time to seize the window period of instant retail market share, but the intensity will gradually wane. A case in point is that compared to promoting subsidy efforts, JD.com's current focus has shifted back to building "quality e-commerce".

What platforms need to consider is a longer-term topic. The subsidy model will eventually transition to "service premium." Purely low prices are unsustainable, and ultimately, the core competence will be the ability to control resource allocation and supply chain scheduling.

Returning to Alibaba, from "passive defense" to "active breakthrough," whether it was the previous Alipay red envelope war that leveraged 200 million yuan in subsidies to drive the social payment market or the sales miracle created by Tmall Double 11, this company's aggressiveness has repeatedly rewritten industry rules.

For Flash Sale, food delivery is merely an entry point, with the true ambition being to create a "large consumption platform." In the past, the lack of strategy and the difficulty of cross-departmental integration have received unprecedented attention in this food delivery war.

With Ele.me and Fliggy integrated into Alibaba's China E-commerce Business Group, they unify operations and open up resources. Just as tea drinks are a lever for food delivery, Taobao Flash Sale is also a lever. Beyond catering, it expands into more categories like fresh produce, supermarkets, home appliances, electronics, beauty products, clothing, etc., realizing the delivery of everything to your door.

What differs from the past is that this battleground has expanded from "online e-commerce" to a trillion-level market encompassing "instant retail + local life + global consumption," but its core value lies not only in the explosive growth of order volume but also in rethinking how to redefine the competitive dimensions of instant retail through resource synergy, scenario innovation, and rule reconstruction.