Analysis of Community Group Purchasing in China during the COVID-19 Period

Abstract

Many new first-tier cities in China, including Wuhan, have started to develop community group purchasing businesses as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. This paper interprets the supply chain structure of community group purchasing business from the perspective of e-commerce platforms. By dividing the whole process into five parts: shared warehouse - central warehouse - front distribution center (FDC) - stores and group buying brokers - consumer, this paper focuses on the role of the first three parts in the fulfillment process, analyzes the commodity flow process of this new business model, and proposes better efficiency solutions accordingly, so as to explore the fulfillment efficiency of community group buying compared to traditional e-commerce, and further offer some suggestions for the future improvement.