Meituan Releases the First ＂Polaris Medical and Aesthetic Institutions List＂ to Help Improve the Quality and Efficiency of the Service Retail Industry

The medical beauty industry is entering a new stage of professional development. On August 25, Meituan officially released the 2023 "Polaris Medical Beauty Institutions List" in Chengdu, covering 6 cities in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu and Hangzhou for the first time. A total of 45 professional medical beauty institutions were selected.

As the first institutional list based on user word-of-mouth evaluation and medical professional strength, Meituan Polaris aims to create a new standard for medical beauty selection stores, provide consumers with a safe and attentive guide to a better life, and help the high-quality development of service retail with digitalization. It is understood that this is the first practice of Meituan’s "dual-track evaluation system" on the institutional side.

Deeply cultivate the medical beauty industry and advocate the selection criteria for medical beauty stores

Since exploring the medical beauty industry in 2017, Meituan has been deeply involved in the field of medical beauty for more than 6 years, continuously linking the upper, middle and lower reaches of the medical beauty industry through digital technology, innovating service models, optimizing service experience, and promoting the development of the industry towards standardization, chain, and branding.

As the medical beauty industry matures, consumers’ professionalism continues to improve, placing higher demands on medical services. "Compared with the price, the safety and professionalism of the institution are the most concerned points in my daily choice." Ms. Wang, from Chengdu, has made projects such as water and light hydration and photon skin rejuvenation as new options for daily care.

Meituan’s latest research data shows that "safety" is the most concerned point for more than 50% of consumers who have not yet experienced medical aesthetic services, and more than 70% of consumers make independent decisions based on medical aesthetic knowledge. More and more consumers will actively recommend planting grass to people around them because of the professionalism they feel when they go to the store.

To this end, Meituan Medical Beauty upgraded its store selection evaluation system and launched the Polaris Medical Beauty Organization List. The first Meituan Polaris List covers Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu and Hangzhou. Among the 45 institutions on the list, including 27 comprehensive strength-based, 9 doctor-entrepreneurial, 6 service experience-based and other types of stores, presenting a new look of a diverse medical beauty market to meet consumers’ more refined and specialized store selection needs.

In order to select these high-quality medical beauty institutions, on the basis of a large number of real user evaluations on the platform, Meituan Polaris list introduces medical professional ability evaluation, and joins industry authoritative experts and senior medical beauty consumers to create a new standard for the evaluation of medical beauty institutions with dual attributes of consumption and medical care. Meituan Polaris list covers five dimensions: qualification level, doctor strength, service experience, environmental atmosphere, and user reputation, of which the two dimensions of qualification level and doctor strength are the most critical.

▲ 2023 Meituan "Polaris Medical Beauty Institutions List" was officially released in Chengdu. Photography: Wang Ming

Meituan medical beauty industry leader Liu Rong said that in order to consolidate medical professionalism, the list has established a "medical professional jury" to evaluate and score the medical professional capabilities and service experience of institutions. Combined with the anonymous survey of medical beauty consumers and the double verification of platform word-of-mouth data, many medical safety details hidden under the "iceberg" are included in the selection points. It is understood that Meituan Polaris has more than 140 evaluation dimensions and conducts all-round assessments of institutions.

Professor Cao Yilin, director of the National Tissue Engineering Center, said: "Today’s beauty seekers, after planting grass online, often need to go to three offline institutions before they dare to make consumption decisions with confidence. Standardization of medical and aesthetic services is imperative. The release of the Meituan Polaris medical and aesthetic institution list will help consumers know good institutions, find good institutions, and play the leading force of’Polaris’."

Developing a professional "dual-track evaluation system" to promote new development in the industry

Since the beginning of this year, the online service industry has maintained 80% growth, the supply of the service market has accelerated recovery, and service consumption in health and other fields has continued to pick up. In August, the National Bureau of Statistics released retail sales data for the first time. From January to July, our country’s service retail sales increased by 20.3% year-on-year.

As an important part of consumer healthcare, the medical beauty market has strong endogenous momentum. According to the "2023 Annual Insights Report on China’s Medical Beauty Industry" released by Deloitte, China’s medical beauty market is expected to achieve a 20% growth rate in consumption in 2023, and the market is expected to maintain a compound annual growth rate of about 15% in the next four years. As the medical beauty industry develops towards standardization and refinement, professional capabilities have become the second curve driving institutional growth, and the establishment of a professional-centered medical beauty consumption decision-making system has increasingly become an industry consensus.

"Medical services have a professional cognitive threshold, and Meituan Medical Beauty has always been in awe, doing a good job of’translators’ and’converters’ between consumers and professional services, helping consumers understand institutions and services simply and conveniently, while also providing differentiated value increments for institutions," Liu Rong said.　

The release of Meituan’s North Star list is an important part of the construction of the medical beauty professional system. According to Liu Rong, medical beauty consumers usually encounter two types of information gaps, which are caused by opaque information and high industry awareness thresholds. In the first stage of medical beauty professional capacity building, the platform is committed to using digitalization to solve the problems of medical beauty information transparency and service standardization, and ensure consumers’ deterministic experience. Meituan data shows that after standardized transformation of medical beauty services, online orders can increase by 25% compared with before the transformation.

After entering a new stage of development, Meituan Medical Beauty uses digitalization to fill the "professional gap" faced by consumers. On the one hand, through the dual-track evaluation system and list, more "treasure stores" have digital business cards; on the other hand, adhere to popular science, Meituan’s "lightning rod" content products are consulted by more than 80,000 people every day. According to insiders, Meituan will also release a list of professional doctors to build a full-link service from store selection to doctor selection.

Meituan Medical Beauty’s in-depth exploration of the "digital + professional" integration model is expected to further promote the standardization and standardization of the industry. At the press conference, Wuhou District and Meituan Medical Beauty signed a strategic cooperation agreement. The two sides will jointly promote the construction of a strong chain in Chengdu’s medical beauty industry and help Chengdu’s "medical beauty capital" to speed up the construction.

▲ At the event site, Wuhou District, Chengdu signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Meituan Medical Beauty. Photography: Wang Ming

"Service retail is the track of Changpo thick snow. Meituan will continue to deepen the medical value of medical beauty services, use digitalization to help professionalization, and use specialization to feed long-term operation of institutions, so that more consumers can see’starlight ‘, and let more high-quality institutions become’starlight’. Together with the majority of merchants, we will improve the online rate and standardization level of the industry, and help the high-quality development of the service retail industry." Li Xiaohui, head of Meituan’s beauty and medical business, said.