While COVID-19 certainly has had a short-term impact on Meituan and Alibaba’s local service businesses, both companies’ brand awareness has gone up dramatically during the virus outbreak, as they are the only national brands that provide delivery services during the self-quarantine period in China. Case in point, Gao Zhixiao, Meituan’s 32-year-old delivery driver, was on the cover of TIME magazine this week for risking his life to deliver goods for families in Beijing.

Close

To compete better, both Meituan and Alipay (payment service of Alibaba) have redesigned their user interface to favor their own traffic in recent months. For example, Meituan has substantially ramped up promotion of its self-owned grocery delivery and payment services. On the other hand, Alipay held its annual partner conference on March 10th and rolled out its redesigned Alipay user interface. The new interface prioritized "Eleme" (delivery services), "restaurant review" and "hotel bookings", directly competing with nearly every aspect of Meituan’s core businesses.

Close

It's also worth noting that Meituan recently has signed a strategic partnership with China Telecom to collaborate closely on 5G, IoT, new retail, and enterprise services, etc., which are the areas strategically important to Alibaba too.