How does Meituan trick its members?

The Double 11 and Double 12 carnival is over, are you still immersed in the pleasure of getting bargains? It is undeniable that e-commerce platforms compete with each other with subsidies and low prices, allowing us to make a lot of money. However, what would you do if one day you discovered that under this seemingly beautiful life, we have become the target of exploitation?

During this period, there was an article titled "I was ripped off by Meituan members", which exposed the phenomenon of "big data killing familiar takeaway members". Based on his own experience of ordering takeaways, the author found that if ordered from the same store on Meituan, using the same delivery address and at the same time, members will be charged higher delivery fees than non-members.

The "working people" instantly felt that their emotions were betrayed. For a time, they directed their emotions toward Meituan and began to accuse and criticize it on various social platforms, saying "price discrimination", "cheating members", "ugly eating habits"... and quickly put Meituan in the spotlight.

As of the time of posting, #Meituan was exposed to have killed its old takeout members# has reached 710 million views and generated 55,000 discussions. Members, are you really the group of people who were harvested? How does Meituan trick its members?

Meituan probably never expected that it would become the target of public indignation and criticism because of an article.

The specific course of events is this: this user, whose online name is "Drifting Netizen", opened a Meituan membership in order to be able to eat paid donkey meat hotpot and free chili every day. But when I ordered again, I found that the delivery fee had increased from 2 yuan to 6 yuan. However, when I used another mobile phone that did not have a membership subscription, the delivery fee was still 2 yuan.

Is this a bit crazy? According to our conventional thinking logic, one should enjoy more discounts and benefits by becoming a member, but the fact is the opposite, which obviously goes against the meaning of membership.

So, after consulting customer service to no avail, this picky netizen exposed Meituan’s bad practice of “price discrimination” online.

In recent years, Meituan has been vigorously promoting membership services, which has helped its catering order volume to increase steadily, which inevitably touched the nerves of its members. It turns out that Meituan's performance was supported by harvesting us members, which naturally aroused people's strong dissatisfaction.

In order to verify the different prices for members and non-members of Meituan, I compared different mobile phones and found that "members are more expensive than non-members". Even the prices of dishes and discounts are different. Overall, the less members you are, the more preferential treatment you get from Meituan.

Users paid for membership in order to save money, but ended up spending more money. They were taken advantage of and naturally couldn't help but vent their anger, which led to a nationwide crusade.

In fact, long before this incident was exposed, Meituan had been exposed for the phenomenon of big data killing old customers in the past three years, but it continued despite repeated bans. As early as 2018, Xinhua News Agency revealed that Meituan Hotel had different prices for different accounts; until now, big data price discrimination is still prevalent on Meituan Hotel, travel and other platforms. And Meituan is not an isolated case. Ele.me also uses the same strategy.

2. Crazy harvesting of leeks, how does Meituan trick its members?

The platform’s big data strategy of “killing old customers” is to reap the benefits of users. What is big data killing old customers? As the name suggests, it means taking advantage of the trust of acquaintances and making a fortune from them. In the Internet age, big data price discrimination mainly involves accurately identifying users through the massive user information and data collected by the platform, and displaying higher prices to users with strong consumption willingness and high consumption ability.

Let’s get back to the topic of Meituan cheating its members. When calculation becomes scheming, let’s see how Meituan deceives its members.

1. Attract members with a low price of 4.99 yuan

Careful users should have discovered that the normal activation fee for Meituan membership is 15 yuan, but Meituan offers discounts for first-time membership purchases, meaning that a membership that normally costs 15 yuan can be purchased for as low as 4.99 yuan. However, the first-time member discount is sometimes displayed and sometimes not.

This means that if you wait for a few days, the price may drop to 4.99 yuan. 4.99 yuan is indeed a low amount. What can you do with 4.99 yuan nowadays? You can say that you can’t buy anything. It is precisely by taking advantage of the low price psychology that new users are attracted to become members.

Moreover , I found that during the process of opening a membership, you may also be able to enjoy a limited-time discount of 4.98 yuan, that is, at this time you only need to pay 0.01 yuan to open a membership.

2. The trick of winning a lucky red envelope

Meituan once launched a lucky red envelope product with a value of 1 million yuan. The rule was that the 6th person could get the biggest red envelope. Therefore, every time it was almost time for dinner, various WeChat, QQ, and large groups would start to become agitated, for fear of missing out on the 1 million red envelope.

The rules for red envelopes are full of tricks. You will find that not only is the amount of the red envelopes random, but it also has to meet the required amount. At the same time, it also has to help promote the food delivery company, but many people still cannot resist the temptation of red envelopes.

3. Build a member red envelope system to increase repeat purchase rate

As a member of Meituan, you can enjoy 6 no-threshold 5 yuan red packets every month, which can be used together with discounts/reductions, which is equivalent to getting 30 yuan for free; depending on the merchant's settings, the 5 yuan red packet can be exchanged for a larger amount of red packets in the store, up to 10 yuan; for a limited time, you can enjoy 50% off or buy more red packets at a low price, for example, two no-threshold 5 yuan red packets for 5 yuan, four no-threshold 5 yuan red packets for 9.9 yuan, etc.

In addition, Meituan Waimai will use the membership system to allow us to use the product as much as possible, such as giving out red envelopes when placing orders of a certain amount.

The red envelope benefits for members are stipulated to be used only during the membership period. By obtaining red envelopes through layers of procedures, users are attracted to continuously obtain red envelopes, use red envelopes to place orders, and increase the order rate of new members.

4. The discounts for frequent and infrequent orders are different

From the phones of some of my colleagues who order takeout, I saw that the discount promotions are different for those who order frequently and those who order infrequently. Generally speaking, the prices for those who order frequently will be slightly more expensive, while the prices for those who order infrequently are often lower.

We seize the platform stickiness formed by old users, and at the same time, provide continuously low prices to attract new users to place orders continuously and increase their consumption.

5. Retain users through the 3 yuan renewal policy

Meituan members who purchase membership on a monthly basis will receive a 3 yuan renewal benefit. However, judging from the feedback from netizens online, this benefit is only for some users. I guess it's probably the so-called "killing the familiar" method, talking to the person based on their personality. Specifically, it may be determined based on the user's consumption on the platform.

6. Merchant Easter eggs to satisfy users’ surprise psychology

In addition to the above benefits, Ele.me and Meituan Takeaway members will also give us "merchant easter eggs" in the form of "amount upgrades" in merchant red envelopes. Moreover, for some specific merchants, Meituan can upgrade the 5-yuan no-threshold red envelope to 6 to 8 yuan, satisfying users' sense of surprise and enhancing user stickiness.

3. Behind Meituan’s leeks, the usual tricks of Internet giants

Although Internet giants have a market value of trillions of dollars, they are by no means "philanthropists" but true capitalists.

It’s no secret that Internet platforms are making money by taking advantage of others. This is not only true for food delivery platforms, but also many e-commerce platforms. For example, the same is true for Taobao's money-saving card. A colleague of mine told me excitedly one day that you can activate a Taobao money-saving card for 4 yuan, and it is very cost-effective if you spend a lot. Then I went to check and found that it costs 8.8 to activate it.

It can be said that Meituan’s method of deceiving members is a common trick used by Internet giants. In the early stages, they use crazy subsidies to encircle users. Once users form a habit of using the platform, the ecosystem is established, and they have a voice in the industry, the platform will begin to reap the benefits of users!

After all, capital is always bloodthirsty. The "hundreds of billions of subsidies" in the early stage continued to bleed heavily. If it did not harvest the "leeks" of thousands of members in the later stage, how could it have the halo of a market value of trillions of yuan?

Moreover, "You must pay for what you have done!"

Furthermore, the reason why they let users take advantage of the services first and then quietly reap the benefits from their products is that they have insight into the general psychology of Chinese consumers, which is that once they have chosen one, they don’t want to bother two. Companies are precisely seizing this consumer psychology.

Moreover, the reason why the platform blatantly cuts the leeks of users is that it is targeting the value of goods or services in these fields, which are generally characterized by opaque prices or information asymmetry. For example, when we walk into a physical store or street market, the goods are clearly marked with prices, making it difficult to take advantage of the old customers. However, on the Internet platform, prices are not transparent, and the prices of some products, such as airline tickets and hotels, fluctuate greatly due to seasonal factors, giving platforms the opportunity to take advantage of the old customers.

In addition, I found that the reason why they dared to do so was the herd mentality of their peers, that is, their peers were also doing the same thing. Take Ele.me and Meituan for example. There are only two food delivery companies, one is the other. Both of them have adopted the strategy of big data killing old customers, forming a common antibody, which means that they will prosper together and suffer together.

4. The "killing old customers" algorithm has penetrated into our daily lives. Where are the boundaries of the platform's business ethics?

Since April 2018, the number of complaints about big data price discrimination on the consumer complaint platform "Black Cat Complaint" has increased significantly. As of September 21, there have been as many as 456 complaints, with the largest number of complaints in the travel and e-commerce categories. The strategy of “different prices for different people” has spread to all aspects, and the algorithm of “killing old customers” has also taken over our daily lives.

If we open a social software at random and search for the words "killing the familiar", we can find that the phenomenon of killing the familiar is almost everywhere, covering all aspects such as food, clothing, housing and transportation.

The platform uses its technological advantages to create price differences and even price discrimination without the users' knowledge. It can be said that the platform has lost its boundaries and bottom line.

One netizen even wrote in a complaint: "I have been using a certain platform for more than three years, and have been using it to book hotels, train tickets, and air tickets. I am a platinum card member, but my wife hardly ever uses it. However, when booking the same hotel, the total amount I have to pay is much higher than his. It turns out that I have been spending more money in the name of membership for so many years."

Although users are quite angry about the platform's behavior, it seems that we can only condemn this behavior from the perspective of business ethics, but there is no problem from the perspective of business logic.

After all, it is difficult to reconcile fast, good, economical, cheap, good products and services.

From the perspective of the platform's business model, gradually reducing subsidies to existing members and using the saved money can not only attract more new users and expand the scale, but also enable the platform to make some inclusive service improvements.

However, as a platform giant, it should still have its own business ethical boundaries, and should not mistake "calculation" as "scheming", and use "ugly behavior" to play users around, otherwise it will greatly damage its brand value and reduce its influence.

Author: Internet Brand Officer

Source: Internet Brand Officer (szwanba)