The daily delivery volume of Alibaba Group Holding briefly surpassed rival Meituan last week after it offered free drinks to customers who ordered through its on-demand service amid the industry’s cutthroat competition, according to a report by the technology media outlet LatePost.
Advertisement
Orders on Alibaba’s instant commerce channel Taobao Shangou topped 100 million on Thursday, 20 million fewer than Meituan. After Meituan stopped its promotion on Friday and Saturday, Taobao’s orders overtook Meituan’s, LatePost said on Tuesday without citing the source of its information.
Alibaba, which owns the South China Morning Post, did not respond to requests for comment. Meituan did not respond either.
The data showed that subsidies worked in China’s ultra-competitive market. The industry was shifting from Meituan’s “near-monopoly to near-duopoly” with Alibaba’s emergence, as the challenger lavished generous subsidies on customers, delivery riders and merchants to gain market share, Morgan Stanley said. The two companies are likely to have equal shares of China’s on-demand delivery market by 2030, the bank said.
In food delivery, Meituan is set to dominate the market with a 75 per cent share in terms of gross transaction value by 2030, but its share in the entire instant commerce industry may fall to 48 per cent, almost the same as the 47 per cent share taken by Alibaba, according to Morgan Stanley’s estimates.
Advertisement