THE O2O STRATEGY FOR DIANPING
China’s O2O Market: China’s rapid economic development brings in infinite possibilities to the O2O market. O2O is expected to penetrate into all aspects of life and bride any gap between online and offline businesses in the near future. This will be done implementing information symmetry of production and consumption. The O2O model is anticipated to achieve top notch resource utilization and optimization.
Dianping- An overview: Dianping has come a long way in its ten years of existence. From a mere BBS site to China’s largest local life- consumer guide website- Dianping’s growth is nothing less than enviable. Started as a restaurant review website, Dianping moved with the flow and sometimes even ahead of the flow (Dianping was started a year and a half before YELP). It was a slow and steady growth which introduced many new concepts in the Chinese ecommerce market. Dianping introduced novel ideas like loyalty programs, E-coupons, Product promotions, Reviewer clubs, Group Discounts, Mobile Apps and Group Buying, before emerging into the O2O Local Life Platform giant. Dianping has 100 million active users across 2,000 cities in China. It also has 70% online traffic from mobile devices. Dianping has accumulated over 10 million POI (Point of Interest) and 30 million reviews.
Dianping’s Strength: Dianping’s biggest strengths include high quality rich content with authenticity. It is also a repository of 10 million menrchant information 30 million consumer reviews and 100 million active user base. It also has an accumulated offline merchant network.
Dianping’s Weakness: The IT capabilities of offline merchants are quite poor most times which makes it difficult for them to maneuver within the online application. A lack of backend system to integrate the offline merchants along with no standard procedures to charter delivery and services has been a major drawback.
Dianping’s Future: Dianping as a company has always been able to make the right moves to ensure sustained growth. Expansion to tier2 and tier3 cities should be the focus of the company in the coming years. Collaboration with Tencent was a good strategic move. Tencent WeLife with its 50 million merchant members will finally help Dianping in bridging its business member gap. Dianping in integrating with Tencent not only just record customer information anymore, buy also helps merchants reach the targeted customer segment precisely and make recommendation to them.
Tencent’s Strength: Tencent possesses technology that capacitates internet user to have a better experience online. Millions of users communicate, share experiences, consume information, seek entertainment, and shop online through integrated platforms like QQ, Weixin and WeChat for communications; Qzone for social networking; QQ Game Platform- online games; QQ.com for information. Tencent also has an open platform for e commerce.
Tencent –