Meituan Reveals Innovative Products at 2022 Global Digital Economy Conference

At the 2022 Global Digital Economy Conference on July 29, Meituan, China’s leading e-commerce services platform, focused on instant retail born under the digital economy, and displayed many products such as automatic delivery vehicles, drones, smart restaurants and smart pharmacies.

Chen Rongkai, vice president of Meituan, said that under the strategy of “retail + technology”, the company hopes to rapidly promote the retail efficiency of goods and services based on technological innovation in more than 200 scenarios. Further, the company is looking to better meet the diverse needs of Chinese consumers while helping more merchants better integrate into the digital economy.

Meituan‘s 24-hour smart pharmacy is aimed at solving the problems associated with a 24-hour operation, including using visual recognition, automation controls and other features. The service will enable people to purchase medicine and other necessities outside of regular business hours.

As of June 2022, Meituan‘s UAV has started operation in four business districts in Shenzhen, covering more than 10 communities and office buildings, serving nearly 20,000 households, and completing over 58,000 orders. At present, Meituan‘s UAV distribution business has reached deals with dozens of brands in different categories such as meals, drinks and fresh fruits, and will explore other possibilities in the future.

Meituan has focused on investing its scientific and technological research in more than 200 livelihood service situations so as to improve retail efficiency and better serve customers. According to the company’s Q1 2022 financial report, Meituan invested 4.9 billion yuan ($727 million) in R&D, an increase of 40% compared with last year.

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In order to solve the challenges encountered by small and medium-sized merchants in the ongoing digital upgrading of supply chains, Meituan launched “Baichuan Retail Management System”. Merchants can now use a series of digital management tools on their smartphone, such as picking, distribution, inventory, profit and loss analysis, etc.

In addition, at this conference, Meituan showed for the first time an overview of the company’s big data system for the life services segment of the industry. Based on the consumption data and practice of Meituan in the field of life service, the system visualizes the data of consumption in various cities.