Meituan launches an impact on medical aesthetics

Author | Liu Baodan

Editor | Zhou Zhiyu

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

On September 27, the 2024 Meituan North Star Medical Beauty List was officially released, with 114 professional medical beauty institutions selected from 29 cities nationwide. Both the selected cities and institutions saw a significant increase compared to last year, especially the number of selected institutions more than doubled.

The North Star Medical Beauty List was first introduced by Meituan last year, aiming to set a new standard for consumers to choose medical beauty stores. Meituan hopes to provide consumers with more decision-making references through this list, while expanding its market share in the medical beauty industry.

Since entering the medical beauty industry in 2017, Meituan has been deeply cultivating this field for more than 7 years. With the continuous emergence of new technologies and products in the medical beauty industry, the market is showing more potential.

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

This growth is also reflected in the speed of institution openings. Meituan data shows that in the past three years, the turnover rate of medical beauty institutions 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 rise. Meituan research data shows that about 73% of consumers consider online channels as their main purchasing channel. According to Meituan data, in the past year, the online transaction growth rates for non-invasive anti-aging, hyaluronic acid replenishment, and injection shaping exceeded 110%.

The report also indicates that in 2023, 91% of high-income medical beauty consumers saw a stable or increased medical beauty expenditure compared to the previous year. The majority of high-income medical beauty consumers are expected to maintain or increase their medical beauty spending in 2024, especially favoring continuous consumption of phototherapy and injection projects.

For Meituan, the list helps to 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 upgraded its evaluation standards. Building on the dual-track evaluation system of "medical professionalism" and "user reputation," Meituan focuses on medical professionalism and service experience, categorizing listed institutions into three-star, two-star, and one-star types.

The Meituan North Star Medical Beauty List also publicly disclosed over 100 evaluation indicators for the first time, providing each participating institution with differentiated evaluation profiles and improvement plans 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, with consumers lacking trust in the industry's safety and market competition intensifying, posing 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 Meituan's medical beauty industry leader Liu Rong, Jiang Hua, Director of Plastic Surgery at the Affiliated Oriental Hospital of Tongji University in Shanghai, and Song Jianxing, President of the Chinese Medical Doctor Association's Aesthetic and Plastic Surgeon Branch. The following is a transcript of the exchange (edited by the editor): Q: Why did Meituan upgrade its North Star brand?

Liu Rong: Meituan's North Star was the first to try in the medical beauty industry last year. Medical beauty itself belongs to the larger medical consumption industry, not only medical beauty requires medical expertise, but also the dental and ophthalmology industries. Therefore, Meituan's North Star upgraded its brand, hoping to expand from the medical beauty industry to the consumer medical industry. We hope to reuse the evaluation system of North Star in the consumer medical industry, and conduct evaluations on the services of institutions and the professionalism of doctors.

Q: The list has been established for two years, hoping that the influence will continue to expand. How will the influence of the list be expanded in the future? What considerations and plans are there?

Liu Rong: To enhance the influence of North Star, first, expand the categories, because more categories can be included in the North Star system, there will be more opportunities for joint promotion and publicity, and users will reach and be aware of Meituan's North Star more widely.

Secondly, this year we will focus on building the influence of external channels. For example, we have sponsored the program "I am a Beautiful Person" on Mango TV. We will not only focus on precise audience penetration this year, but in the coming year, North Star will penetrate the general public and the consumer medical crowd.

Q: Compared to the catering and hotel businesses, does the medical beauty industry have a longer fulfillment cycle? From which aspects will Meituan's platform provide fulfillment guarantees?

Liu Rong: Compared to catering and hotels, the fulfillment cycle of medical beauty is particularly long, and the lag in effectiveness is also particularly strong. Therefore, its fulfillment guarantee is for long cycles, especially for long-cycle effects and dispute resolution. We start with the baseline issue of scanning to verify, starting with the possibility of fake drugs and fake equipment that may cause personal harm, and eliminate this issue from the source through scanning to verify.

Throughout the fulfillment process, Meituan provides users with a fulfillment guarantee system, which includes long-term dispute resolution and bottom-line services, such as 90 days or even 180 days of long-term disputes.

Q: In addition to consumer reviews as a reference, the list also includes many experienced doctors and medical teams. Can you introduce them to us?

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

At the same time, several expert professors helped us establish a professional review team, consisting of public tertiary hospital doctors and over 50% of physicians above the deputy chief physician level, composed of nearly a hundred doctors.

The Meituan North Star Medical Beauty List and the Meituan Sinan 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 decisions easier to understand. In fact, this evaluation capability is more important to us. Because this year, the dual-track evaluation system will not only release lists for consumers, but also provide evaluation reports and feedback to businesses Jiang Hua: Professor Song and I can be said to be the earliest generation of formally trained plastic surgeons in China, witnessing and participating in the development of plastic surgery and cosmetic industry in China over the past 40 years. The development has been rapid, but with many issues, mainly manifested in the proliferation of medical institutions like mushrooms, accompanied by a sharp increase in practitioners. However, the uneven development level of professional skills and the asymmetry of information obtained by those seeking medical treatment or beauty enhancement have led to others often describing our industry as "chaotic". I don't think it can be measured with just one word "chaotic".

For participants and witnesses, the Chinese medical aesthetics industry has actually developed rapidly in the past 40 years, with a quickly improving level and strong overall strength. Do you all remember more than a decade ago, where did people go for cosmetic procedures? To South Korea. Is this still the case now? Not so much. What does this indicate? It shows that the overall level of the Chinese plastic surgery and cosmetic industry is constantly improving.

The significance of Meituan engaging in this work lies in guiding seekers of beauty on how to find the "right direction" for medical treatment. At the same time, it also sets a "direction" and "standard" for our practitioners and institutions.

Question: What is the core competitiveness of Meituan when making rankings? How do you think they can provide professional and objective guidance in the medical aesthetics industry?

Jiang Hua: Its core competitiveness mainly lies in three aspects. Firstly, Meituan already has a significant influence in mass consumption, with a large user base and traffic. Secondly, they have made investments. Thirdly, they have a team of reputable and highly professional plastic surgery experts.

Liu Rong: Professor Jiang summarized it as: first, having credibility. Second, being willing to invest. Third, being trusted by experts, as experts are 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 aesthetics industry. For Meituan, medical aesthetics is actually a part of consumer healthcare. Meituan has always emphasized "we want to do long-term things", so the foundation is still serving users. Initially focusing on information transparency and standardization, they now aim to define standards and inform users about what constitutes good institutions and good doctors.

In the current industry, some medical aesthetics vertical platforms are exploring the supply chain towards the end of the industry 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 evaluation and note-taking as open feedback channels, as well as offering products like "Lightning Rod" and "Polaris" from the platform, informing users about what constitutes good institutions and good services.

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

Jiang Hua: More and more people want to undergo medical aesthetics procedures, but at the same time, consumers are becoming more cautious, indicating that this market is becoming more mature.

Song Jianxing: In our country, the focus of medical care has shifted from "treating diseases" to "healthy populations". Consumers are now more cautious, which I think is a sign of transitioning from impulsive consumption to rational consumption, which is a good thing Liu Rong: First, we do feel that consumers are becoming more rational. This rationality is related to the aging of consumer groups. Around 2019, we saw a wave of users flocking in, but now as users try more projects, their consumption becomes more rational because they understand more. The second point is that consumers are becoming more savvy. Everyone is willing to spend money wisely, making it difficult to sell at a high "information differential price". Today, users are still willing to spend money, but they prefer to spend it on good technology and good products.

Many institutions have feedback saying "consumers are increasingly pursuing value for money, and the average customer spending is declining", which is just squeezing out the excess water from the past. For consumers, it is a normal consumption behavior after rational regression