This “new outlet” Alibaba (09988), Huitongda Network (09878), and Wanchen Group (300972.SZ) coincided and sped up the layout!

The Zhitong Finance App learned that on August 29, during the Alibaba (09988) performance conference call, CEO Wu Yongming clearly stated that “AI+ Cloud” is the core technology platform and the big consumer platform integrating shopping and lifestyle services, which are the two major strategic opportunities facing Ali. Wu Yongming specifically emphasized, “Alibaba's layout in the field of instant retail does not focus on competition in a single consumer category, but rather meets the one-stop needs of 1 billion consumers and shapes the commercial form of a major consumer platform in the AI era.”

Coincidentally, Alibaba's strategic investment Huitongda Network (09878) released its mid-term results on August 28, which also focused on laying out the “AI+” strategy and new consumer circuits such as “hard discounts” and “instant retail”; while another company focusing on retail volume sales, Wanchen Group (300972.SZ) experienced strong ups and downs last Friday.

Technology is compounding new consumption, and a “new outlet” incorporating elements such as hard discounts and instant retail is about to emerge.

Alibaba strategically invested in Huitongda in 2018. It is an important strategic shareholder and largest institutional shareholder of Huitongda. In August of this year, Alibaba Cloud and Huitongda signed a full-stack AI cooperation around the sinking market “AI+ Industry” to target the vast market of 300 million rural households and 4.7 million township couple stores. The two sides will jointly develop and deploy various AI agents to expand the number of customers and transaction scale of both sides, and simultaneously promote the improvement of urban and rural circulation efficiency and the monetization of the value of the sinking market industry and retail data.

In the “instant retail” field, Alibaba and others have set off a trend of “flash sales” and “instant delivery” in the high-tier market; while its investee company Huitongda is using a deep understanding of the sinking market and combining digitalization and supply chains in the sinking market to transform some traditional township couple stores into new retail terminals with online platforms for ordering and door-to-door delivery.

As you can imagine, in the future, it is not ruled out that, following comprehensive AI cooperation, Alibaba and Huitongda will further cooperate to replicate the “instant retail” model widely in the sinking market.

On the other hand, “hard discount” has also become a popular term for many platforms to lay out large consumer segments.

Wanchen Group's brand “I want to come” rapidly expanded with mass sales of snacks, with over 10,000 stores, and “skyrocketed” in revenue and net profit, which rose and stopped strongly after opening on August 29; Huitongda, which has 250,000 member retail stores, also mentioned in financial reports released during the same period that it will focus on expanding the “hard discount” category to meet the needs of a wider range of customers.

The analysis points out that under the impetus of AI, the large consumer market is evolving at an accelerated pace in the direction of high frequency, full scenarios, and diverse experiences.