Author | Liu Baodan From performance to market confidence, Meituan is walking out of a three-year low point, but Wang Xing is not stopping there - he has even bigger plans. Going overseas has become a must for Chinese companies. Meituan, which has been warming up for 8 years, has finally made up its mind to put going overseas on the agenda. Recently, Meituan began recruiting senior engineers for international silver enterprise direct connection. After the model was successful in the Hong Kong market, Meituan officially kicked off its overseas expansion, accelerated recruitment and put the first stop of the overseas expansion in Saudi Arabia in the Middle East. Going overseas is a critical turning point, which means that after more than ten years of capacity accumulation, Meituan has to export its local life capabilities to the world, which is as significant as the replication of TikTok by ByteDance. In the wave of Internet companies going overseas, Meituan went overseas later because local life patterns are more important than social, e-commerce and other industries. However, Wang Xing must make this move. Against the background of intensified domestic competition and the shrinking of community group buying, he must find a new growth story. On his entrepreneurial journey, Wang Xing is still determined to create a new business legend in this global adventure. A must-have question. Meituan has fought a beautiful takeaway battle in Hong Kong. On May 6, Measurable AI, a market research firm, released the latest data showing that by March 2024, according to the number of orders, KeeTa, the takeaway business of Meituan in Hong Kong, has a market share of 44%, rising to the largest takeaway platform in Hong Kong. However, Hong Kong is only a stopover for Meituan's overseas expansion, and Meituan has set its real meaning of going overseas in Saudi Arabia. Wall Street news learned that Meituan has been recruiting people around the direction of going overseas in the past two months. The positions include engineers, overseas human resources and operation experts, international payment and transaction product managers, mainly responsible for payments, employee management and related products in overseas markets. More importantly, the recruitment of local talents. More than a month ago, Meituan posted relevant recruitment information on LinkedIn and the Middle East recruitment platform Baye.com, with Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, as the place of work. From the city selection, Meituan did not choose the United States with a larger market space, nor did it choose Southeast Asia where culture and food are more similar, but chose Saudi Arabia. It can be seen that Meituan's overseas expansion strategy still has a heavy experimental component and is more cautious. Wang Xing is not fighting an unprepared battle. For this overseas expansion, Meituan has been planning for many years. As early as 2016, Wang Xing began to consider the issue of going overseas and visited Silicon Valley, Berlin, Israel, Jakarta and other places. In 2017, Meituan officially laid out overseas accommodation business, first connecting hotels in nearly 100 countries overseas to the Meituan application. At that time, the domestic and foreign takeaway wars were in full swing, and with Meituan's listing in Hong Kong in 2018, Wang Xing's overseas strategy was forced to be shelved. Since then, Meituan has also made a series of international investments, including Swiggy in India, Gojek in Indonesia, and Opay in Nigeria, involving food, taxis, payments and other fields, to prepare for going overseas. Along with the frequent news reports of Meituan's victory in Hong Kong, Meituan's overseas plan was finally brought to an unprecedented strategic height in 2024, and Wang Xing once again rushed to the forefront. In February, Meituan put the home business group, the in-store business group and other businesses into the core local business sector, and appointed Wang Putong as CEO, while Wang Xing personally took charge of overseas business, which ensured the landing of the overseas expansion strategy in the organizational structure. In fact, before the confirmation of the overseas expansion strategy, Wang Xing personally visited the Middle East last May and met with members of the Saudi royal family, laying the foundation for Meituan's layout in Saudi Arabia.

In today's weather is good. Today's weather is good.

After stabilizing its position in the competition with Douyin, Meituan quickly shifted its focus to a new market. This time, Meituan has decided to make a big move in the medical beauty field.

On September 27, 2024, Meituan's Polaris Medical Beauty List was officially released, with 114 professional medical beauty institutions selected in 29 cities nationwide. Both the selected cities and institutions have seen significant increases compared to last year, especially selected institutions have more than doubled.

The Polaris Medical Beauty List was first launched by Meituan last year, aiming to set a new standard for consumers to choose medical beauty institutions. Meituan hopes that through this list, they can provide consumers with more decision-making references while expanding their share in the medical beauty market.

Since entering the medical beauty industry in 2017, Meituan has been deeply involved in the medical beauty field for more than seven years. With the continuous emergence of new technologies and products in medical beauty, the market is showing more potential.

From an industry perspective, according to Deloitte's 'China Medical Beauty Industry 2024 Insight Report,' the Chinese medical beauty market is expected to grow at a rate of 10%, maintaining rapid growth of 10% to 15% in the coming years.

This is also reflected in the speed of opening institutions. Meituan data shows that in the past three years, the turnover rate of medical beauty institutions has reached 126%. As of September 2024, nearly 3000 new medical beauty institutions have opened on the platform this year, a year-on-year increase of 38.5%.

The penetration rate and online rate of the medical beauty industry continue to increase. Meituan research data shows that about 73% of consumers consider online channels as their main purchase channel. According to Meituan data, in the past year, online transactions for non-invasive anti-aging, hydrotherapy, and injection shaping have grown at an annual rate of over 110%.

The above report also shows that in 2023, 91% of high-income and middle-income medical beauty consumers' medical beauty spending has remained stable or increased compared to the previous year. The majority of high-income and middle-income medical beauty consumers will continue to maintain or increase their medical beauty expenditure in 2024, especially favoring continued consumption of photovoltaic and injection projects.

For Meituan, the ranking list can better establish standards in the medical beauty industry and quickly form a medical beauty mindset among consumers, which is one of the most important ways for Meituan to seize the medical beauty track.

To this end, Meituan has also upgraded its evaluation standards. Based on the dual-track evaluation system of "medical professionalism" and "user word of mouth," Meituan focuses on medical professionalism and service experience, classifying listed institutions into three types: three stars, two stars, and one star.

Meituan's Polaris Medical Beauty List also publicly discloses more than 100 evaluation indicators for the first time, providing differentiated evaluation profiles and improvement plans for each participating institution for free, helping institutions identify and address issues, and achieve long-term operation.

However, the medical beauty market is still in its early stages of development, consumers still lack trust in industry safety, and market competition is intensifying, all of which pose certain challenges to Meituan's medical beauty business.

After more than seven years of development, Meituan has shown unprecedented strength and determination in the medical beauty track, which is not only a bet on the medical beauty track but also a necessary requirement for Meituan to explore the local life market. This will be a tough battle.

Wall Street News conducted a dialogue with Liu Rong, the person in charge of medical beauty industry at Meituan, Jiang Hua, Director of Plastic Surgery at the affiliated Oriental Hospital of Tongji University in Shanghai, and Song Jianxing, President of the Beauty and Plastic Surgery Physicians Branch of the Chinese Medical Doctor Association. The following is the transcript of the exchange meeting (edited).

Question: Why did Meituan upgrade the Polaris brand?

Liu Rong: Meituan Polaris was the first to try in the medical beauty industry last year. Medical beauty itself belongs to the medical consumer industry, not only medical beauty requires medical professionalism, but also the dental and ophthalmic industries. Therefore, Meituan Polaris upgraded its brand, hoping to expand from the medical beauty industry to the consumer medical industry. It is also based on this consideration that we hope to reuse the evaluation system of Polaris in the consumer medical industry, and conduct certain evaluations based on the service of institutions and the professionalism of doctors.

Question: The list has been done for two years, hoping that the influence will continue to expand. How to expand the influence of the list next? What considerations and plans do you have?

Liu Rong: In terms of enhancing the influence of Polaris, first, expand the categories, because more categories can be included in the Polaris system, there will be more opportunities for joint promotion and joint publicity, so that users will more widely reach and know about Meituan Polaris.

Secondly, this year we will focus on building the influence of external channels. For example, we have sponsored the show 'I am a Big Beauty' on Mango TV. This year, we will not only focus on precise audience penetration, but in the coming year, Polaris will penetrate the general public and the consumer medical crowd.

Question: Compared to the dining and travel to store business, does the medical beauty industry have a longer fulfillment cycle? From which aspects will Meituan platform provide fulfillment guarantee?

Liu Rong: Compared to dining and travel, the fulfillment cycle of medical beauty is particularly long, and the lag of effects is also particularly strong. Therefore, its fulfillment guarantee is particularly for long-term protection, especially for long-term effects and dispute-related protection. We start with scanning for authenticity as the baseline issue, starting with the possibility of fake drugs and fake devices that may cause personal injury, and eliminating this issue from the source through scanning for authenticity.

Throughout the entire performance process, Meituan has provided users with a performance guarantee system, which includes long-term disputes and bottom-line services that can be delayed for 90 days or even 180 days.

Q: In addition to consumer reviews as a reference, are there many senior doctors and medical teams that can introduce us to the list?

Liu Rong: We initially invited 7 professors as expert consultant group. In terms of medical expertise, Meituan is not professional, so we have invited 7 authoritative experts and professors in the industry to help us jointly develop service standards and diagnostic criteria related to medical professionalism. For example, when evaluating liposuction surgery, Professor Song proposed that liposuction surgery should not only consider the plan and suction quality, but also the amount of bleeding. Such professional assessment dimensions can only be proposed by industry experts.

At the same time, several expert professors helped us establish a professional review team, composed of public Grade 3A doctors and over 50% senior physicians, forming a medical review team of nearly a hundred doctors.

Meituan's Polaris Medical Beauty List and Meituan's Semale List are simple results generated under a dual-track evaluation system combining medical professionalism and user reputation. The list is just one part of the dual-track evaluation application, making consumer decision-making easier to understand. In fact, this evaluation capability is more important to us. Because this year, the dual-track evaluation system not only releases lists for consumer users, but also provides evaluation reports and feedback for businesses.

Jiang Hua: Professor Song and I should be regarded as the earliest generation of formally trained plastic surgeons in China, witnessing and participating in the rapid development of plastic surgery and cosmetic surgery in China over the past 40 years. The industry has developed rapidly with many issues, mainly manifested in the rapid increase of medical institutions like bamboo shoots after rain, accompanied by a sharp increase in practitioners. However, the uneven level of professional skills and the asymmetric information obtained by those seeking medical care and beauty make others often refer to our industry as 'chaotic.' I don't think it can be measured by just one 'chaotic' term.

For participants and witnesses, the Chinese medical and aesthetic industry has developed rapidly over the past 40 years, with a fast improvement in level and strong overall strength. Do you still remember ten years ago when people wanted to have cosmetic procedures done, they went to South Korea. Does this situation still exist now? Very rarely. What does this indicate? It shows that the overall level of the Chinese plastic and cosmetic industry workforce is constantly improving.

The significance of Meituan's involvement in this work lies in guiding us as seekers of beauty on how to find the 'right direction' for medical treatment. At the same time, it also sets a 'direction' and 'standards' for our practitioners and institutions for development.

Question: What is Meituan's core competitiveness when making rankings? How do you think a professional and objective guide can be done in the medical beauty industry?

Jiang Hua: Its core competitiveness is mainly reflected in three aspects. The first aspect is that Meituan already has significant influence in mass consumer consumption, with a large user base and traffic. The second aspect is the investment they have made. The third aspect is that they combine a group of reputable and highly professional plastic surgery experts.

Liu Rong: Professor Jiang summarized it as follows: first, having credibility. Second, being willing to invest. Third, being trusted by experts, with experts willing to stand with the platform, which is quite important.

Question: From a business perspective, what are the differences between Meituan and other platforms?

Liu Rong: It depends on how each platform positions the medical beauty industry when looking at it today. For Meituan, medical beauty is actually part of consumer medical care. Meituan has always said 'we want to do long-term things', so at the core, it is about serving users. Initially focusing on information transparency and standardization, now it's about defining standards and informing users what constitutes good institutions and good physicians.

In the current industry, some medical beauty vertical platforms are starting to explore the supply chain at the end of the industrial chain. Some content platforms provide users with very rich information, but users also face the problem of 'information overload'. Meituan hopes to give users a voice, for example, by providing open feedback methods like evaluations and notes, as well as official platform products like 'lightning rod' and 'Polaris', to inform users about good institutions and services.

Question: In recent years, consumers have become more cautious and even 'stingy' in medical beauty consumption. How do you all view the future development trends of the medical beauty industry?

Jiang Hua: More and more people want to undergo medical beauty treatments, but are becoming increasingly cautious, indicating that this market is becoming more mature.

Song Jianxing: Now our country's medical focus has shifted from "disease treatment" to "healthy population", now consumers are more cautious, I think this is a sign of the transformation from impulsive consumption in the past to rational consumption, which is also a good thing.

Liu Rong: First, we do feel that consumers are becoming more rational. This rationality is related to the medical experience of consumers. Around 2019, we saw a concentrated influx of users, now users are becoming more rational as they try more projects, because they are becoming more knowledgeable. Secondly, consumers are more astute, everyone is willing to spend their money wisely, it is difficult to sell at a very high "information gap price", today users are still willing to spend money, but they prefer to spend it on good technology and good products.

Many institutions will feedback that "users are now pursuing more cost-effective options, and the average customer price is decreasing all the way", it is just squeezing out the past excess water, for consumers, it is normal consumption behavior after a rational return.