Anyone with discerning eyes could see that the public opinion war between Slackin’ Delivery and Homely Delivery had clearly escalated!

Slackin’ Delivery struck first, dismantling the entire delivery platform’s basic tactics.

Just like the previous analysis of Homely Group and Shengrun Group, they dissected how delivery platforms actually play the role of middlemen, all doing the same thing.

Delivery platforms continuously squeeze the interests of delivery riders, merchants, and customers, eroding market share, thereby inflating the company’s market value, and eventually evolving into giant corporations.

Of course, during this continuous expansion, platform companies also create value. Their data algorithms and resource integration capabilities are the main value they create for society.

From this perspective alone, platform companies indeed have meaning in their existence.

Only when their gained benefits far exceed the value they create, when platforms become middlemen exploiting both sides, do they have a massive negative effect on the industry’s development.

Homely Delivery’s counterattack was entirely based on the current reality.

The reality was that delivery platforms hadn’t yet reached a monopoly position, so the value currently created by delivery platforms was greater than their actual returns.

Since the current existence of delivery platforms was still relatively positive and progressive overall, Slackin’ Delivery’s previous attack, though predicting the future negative effects of delivery platforms, lacked sufficient persuasiveness at present.

Through delivery riders’ firsthand accounts, Homely Delivery had to some extent proven that their business model was understood and supported by delivery riders and merchants!

This somewhat weakened Slackin’ Delivery’s promotional offensive.

Professor Wang’s paper aimed to examine this issue from a higher perspective, determining a winner between the disputing parties!

When writing this paper, Professor Wang had already collected a wealth of data and materials, so he was fully prepared for some of the questions from the audience in the live streaming room.

“First, I want to address the first question: delivery riders unanimously oppose reducing order volume and working hours because they want to earn more money. Does this indicate that Homely Delivery’s model is welcomed by delivery riders?”

“Certainly not!”

“In fact, in some exploitative factories in the past, factory owners had already mastered similar methods. They set a very low base salary for workers and calculated the majority of additional income as overtime. This way, workers could only work overtime desperately to earn more money, because without overtime, they couldn’t earn enough!”

“If at this point workers were told that overtime would be banned starting tomorrow, they would definitely protest vehemently!”

“Are they protesting against no overtime? No! What they’re actually protesting is low wages.”

“This tactic is actually easy to expose, because platform companies deliberately compress the base salary to a minimum or even zero level! At the same time, they directly link delivery riders’ earnings with order volume, which indeed stimulates delivery riders’ work enthusiasm, but also gradually transforms delivery riders into emotionless order-taking tools!”

“So delivery riders’ lives cannot be guaranteed. Their desperate rush for orders is not because they’re so eager to exchange their lives for money, but because the company deliberately creates a situation where they have no choice but to do so!”

“Some friends hearing this might think of a second question: In a situation where customers demand fast delivery and low delivery fees, and delivery riders want to earn more money, is it wrong for platforms to establish policies that satisfy both parties?”

As soon as Professor Wang posed this question, the audience in the live streaming room immediately began discussing heatedly.

“Yeah, is the platform’s approach wrong?”

“If not done this way, how can low delivery fees be guaranteed? This is an unsolvable problem. You can’t just raise issues without offering solutions, right?”

“I think the platform’s current solution is not unacceptable.”

“How can you say that? Delivery platforms forcibly lowering delivery fees to seize market share is itself an unreasonable behavior. Delivery fees should return to their original value!”

“Many customers feel they’re enjoying low delivery fees, so they turn a blind eye to this phenomenon! But let me ask, once delivery platforms occupy the market through burning money and subsidies, and then drastically increase delivery fees to recoup profits, how will you choose?”

Seeing the increasingly heated discussion, Professor Wang responded at the appropriate time: “Solving problems is not about speaking from one’s own standpoint, but about taking a comprehensive view from the whole!”

“You shouldn’t mindlessly side with platforms just because you’re a consumer benefiting from low delivery fees. Instead, you should clearly recognize how to protect your long-term interests!”

“For platforms, they should indeed earn profits, but these profits should come from innovative services through resource integration, not from unlimited exploitation of merchants, consumers, and delivery riders through monopoly and information asymmetry advantages!”

“For delivery riders, platforms cannot use various algorithms to squeeze their limits! Making them violate traffic rules by running red lights, treating them like delivery machines with no regard for life safety to improve delivery efficiency! We should provide them with guarantees, reasonably plan working hours, and allow them to receive relatively generous salary packages under normal work intensity!”

“From the consumer’s perspective, platforms shouldn’t first monopolize customer resources with low delivery fees, then continuously increase delivery fees to recoup money. Instead, they should always keep delivery fees within a reasonable value range.”

“A platform is only perfect if it coordinates the interests of all parties. One-sidedly emphasizing the difficulties of one party without addressing the distribution of benefits is just obfuscating the issue!”

“Homely Delivery seems to be doing well currently, but many internal problems are already showing signs.”

“Let me ask the audience in the live streaming room, do you prefer to ignore problems until they appear? Or do you prefer to prepare for rainy days by having solutions ready before problems arise?”

Professor Wang posed the question without waiting for the audience’s response and continued: “In my paper, I mainly discuss potential problems in future industry development and corresponding solutions.”

“Big data and algorithmic programming can indeed significantly improve work efficiency, but this improvement has limits. Before reaching this limit, efficiency should be prioritized over guarantees, but after exceeding this limit, guarantees should be prioritized over efficiency.”

“Current big data and algorithmic programming can squeeze delivery riders unlimitedly to improve efficiency, but they cannot provide guarantees for delivery riders!”

“And this is the biggest difference between Slackin’ Delivery and Homely Delivery!”

Next, Professor Wang used cases and specific data from his paper to substantiate his viewpoint, comprehensively refuting the two directions of Homely Delivery’s offensive.

With reason, evidence, and measure, beyond the cold data interpretation, he added many of his own genuine feelings.

Hard work pays off. To write this paper, Professor Wang became a delivery rider, experiencing delivery riders’ feelings in busy and arduous work, making his writing naturally persuasive.

He could feel that under the algorithm’s big data, he was gradually transformed from an ordinary worker into a tool continuously delivering food.

This change was clearly misaligned, resulting from a lack of humanistic care.

If this humanistic care remained lacking for a long time, gradually, customers would only care about delivery speed and delivery fee prices, while delivery riders, to earn more money, would consistently accept this alienation. Then this problem would only become more serious, perhaps never to be resolved.

As for platforms, they would certainly prefer to turn delivery riders into tools, into food delivery machines.

But Slackin’ Delivery took a completely different path.

Through the most basic welfare guarantees and rules, they set a bottom line for efficiency improvement. Only within this bottom line did they continuously optimize program algorithms to improve delivery efficiency, and this bottom line was never allowed to be exceeded.

This bottom line included factors such as delivery riders’ working hours, basic salary, welfare guarantees, and so on.

Although Slackin’ Delivery’s operation model increased costs to some extent, comparing it with Homely Delivery’s model made it clear which operation model had a better future!

Projecting based on Homely Delivery’s operation model, in the future, platforms would inevitably continue to use big data algorithms to squeeze delivery riders and merchants unlimitedly to pursue higher profits, gradually causing extreme internal competition in the entire industry, making delivery riders suffer unbearably, and lowering the quality of food delivery for ordinary customers!

But no matter how Slackin’ Delivery might change in the future, as long as they continued to adhere to their original operational bottom line, they could always maintain healthy industry development!

When Rui Yuchen raised this point in the video before, due to lack of theoretical support, it didn’t resonate widely, allowing Homely Delivery to seize the opportunity to obfuscate the issue through various means.

But after Professor Wang’s analysis, he clearly provided theoretical support for Rui Yuchen’s deduction!

He not only pointed out the essential difference between Slackin’ Delivery and Homely Delivery but also indicated the necessary path for healthy industry development.

A company that only focuses on efficiency and algorithms while completely ignoring humanistic care and evading social responsibility might appear to be so-called “internet innovation” on the surface, but is actually exploiting through newer technology in a more advanced way. In the future, such companies will inevitably be abandoned by society!

……

“Unexpected, truly unexpected, to think Tenda still had such means.”

“Such professional analysis, with paper data supporting it…”

“Well, Mr. Pei, you’ve won again.”

Nie Yunsheng’s face darkened as he watched the live stream, feeling the situation growing increasingly unfavorable.

He realized that Homely Delivery’s attempt to recover some ground through this public opinion war had completely failed!

Tenda Group and Mr. Pei seemed able to predict the future, again placing a huge stumbling block in the direction where the Anti-Tenda Alliance was trying to break through, blocking their path.

However, he wasn’t intimidated.

Although Professor Wang’s paper provided theoretical support for Rui Yuchen’s previous assertions, beautifully winning this public opinion war and instantly reversing the situation that Homely Delivery had worked hard to turn around, this was not unacceptable for Nie Yunsheng.

This public opinion war was only lost in Homely Delivery’s domain. Losing the battlefield of one delivery platform, Nie Yunsheng still had other battlefields.

The biggest issue now was that this paper had expanded the public opinion war, extending the battlefield from the present to the future!

Before this, the public opinion war between Tenda Group and the Anti-Tenda Alliance had remained focused on current problems.

For instance, Headwind Logistics in the express delivery industry could comprehensively suppress Shengrun Group precisely because Shengrun Group had already established a market-dominant position in the express delivery industry and had made some ugly moves, allowing Headwind Logistics to seize the opportunity to beat them severely.

After the previous defeat in the express delivery field, Nie Yunsheng confirmed one thing.

That was: if the Anti-Tenda Alliance wanted to turn the tables in the public opinion war, they could only choose industries like Homely Delivery, which currently had advantages, to compete with Tenda.

Because Homely Delivery hadn’t yet made too many ugly moves and still had a decent image in all consumers’ minds.

But Mr. Pei once again saw through their intentions, extending the public opinion battlefield from the present to the future!

Arguing this way, the Anti-Tenda Alliance companies’ underpants would be completely torn off, their chances of winning would significantly decrease, even approaching zero!

Because companies under the Anti-Tenda Alliance all shared a common point: their purpose for development and growth was to eventually form industry monopolies and build huge business giants!

While Tenda currently showed no such trend, at least for now, the vast majority of consumers trusted Tenda far more than other companies in the Anti-Tenda Alliance.

Once these expectations were made public, the Anti-Tenda Alliance’s last breakthrough point in the public opinion war would also be tightly blocked!