Sou Hu Cai Jing·2025-09-03 03:46Core Insights - The article discusses the intense competition in the food delivery sector among major retail e-commerce platforms in China, specifically Alibaba, JD.com, Pinduoduo, and Meituan, as they release their mid-year financial reports for 2025 [10]. Group 1: Financial Performance - JD.com reported a loss of 14.77 billion yuan while generating 13.85 billion yuan in revenue from its new food delivery business, with the CEO stating that the loss was worthwhile [10] - Meituan invested 9.8 billion yuan to maintain 65.3 billion yuan in instant retail revenue [10] - Alibaba spent between 10 billion to 14 billion yuan on marketing, achieving 14.7 billion yuan in instant retail income [10] Group 2: Strategic Insights - The three companies are heavily investing in food delivery to enhance their capabilities in near-field e-commerce, which is seen as a new trillion-yuan market [10] - Near-field e-commerce requires three key capabilities: front warehouses, fulfillment capabilities, and traffic [10] - Meituan, despite having a first-mover advantage, is struggling with strategic depth compared to JD.com and Alibaba, which can leverage their resources more effectively [10] Group 3: Market Dynamics - The competition is expected to lead to a significant shift in market dynamics, with traditional offline retailers likely to suffer as consumer traffic increasingly moves online [11] - Meituan is projected to remain the leader in food delivery, but it will face challenges as it loses some market share to the emerging near-field e-commerce sector [11] - The ultimate losers in this battle are traditional offline retailers who fail to adapt to the digital transformation [11]