Meetic Group: a dating app in China does not compete with other apps, it competes with being alone

Context

Meetic Group: a dating app in China does not compete with other apps, it competes with being alone

The opening question was framed in category terms: how to situate the app among other dating apps. The analysis explored a different reading. In this market, the app is almost never opened in order to meet someone; it is opened at a specific moment of the day, often in the evening, often alone, to fill time that has no other destination.

That shift changes the definition of the competitor. Looked at through stated intent, the competitor is another dating app. Looked at through the moment, the competitor is short video, livestreaming, gaming, messaging — everything that fills the same slot. The conclusions and recommendations delivered to the client are not disclosed.

A dense, fast-moving social market: The Chinese social ecosystem is distinguished by its density and by how quickly usage rotates. Messaging, short video, live streaming, gaming, social commerce and dating coexist on the same phone and compete for the same hours.

That configuration has a direct consequence: the boundary between app categories is far less sharp for the user than for the company. The same person can move from a livestream to a conversation to a short video within minutes, without changing intent.

Livestreaming as a form of sociability: Live streaming occupies a place in China that is hard to grasp from Europe. It is not only an entertainment or selling format: it is somewhere you are present, recognised, taking part. It produces a form of company that requires neither a two-way relationship nor commitment.

Stated intent is unreliable here: On dating apps, the gap between what users say they are looking for and what they do is wide, and it is wide everywhere. In China it is amplified by the social weight attached to dating and by the coexistence of purely recreational uses on the same platforms.

Positioning inside a poorly defined category: The likely strategic challenge was to define a position in a space where the category itself is unstable. Positioning 'among dating apps' assumes that this category constitutes the user's choice set. The analysis explored the opposite hypothesis.

The moment rather than the intent: Studying consumption moments means asking not what people are looking for, but when, where and in what state they open the app. That question produces more stable answers, because a moment can be observed whereas an intent is narrated.

It also redraws the competitive map. A twenty-minute slot late in the evening is contested by everything that fits into twenty minutes — not only by apps in the same category.

Naming a need that is hard to state: The need this kind of platform answers — not being alone at a given moment — is rarely articulated by users and cannot be claimed head-on by the brand either. A promise saying 'against loneliness' would be both accurate and unusable.

A cultural and regulatory constraint: The Chinese market imposes a specific frame: the social sensitivity of dating, the supervision of content and platforms, expectations around moderation. Any proposal has to be formulated with that frame in view.

The work was framed around questions of this kind:

Livestreaming is not for meeting someone. It is for being somewhere with others — which answers solitude, but does not answer it relationally.

Strategic challenge

The questions that structured the work

Research and work conducted

What the engagement covered

• The 'just before / just after' question is the most productive. It reveals the app's real function within a day, independently of what the user says about it.
• The approach applied rests on one principle: on a recreational usage, look at the moment before listening to the intent.
• The gap between stated and actual behaviour: On this kind of usage, what people say they are looking for and what they do diverge sharply. Any purely declarative method produces a picture that is respectable and of little use.
• A need that is socially hard to admit: Solitude is hard to state, in China as elsewhere. The analysis has to reach it indirectly, through moment and context rather than through direct questioning.
• Blurred category boundaries: Users do not think in app categories. A competitive analysis limited to dating apps misses most of the real pressure.
• The specificity of the Chinese market: The dominant social formats, the role of livestreaming and the regulatory frame have no direct equivalent elsewhere. Frameworks imported from other markets mislead.
• A positioning constrained in its expression: The need identified cannot be claimed as such. A formulation has to be found that is at once accurate, socially acceptable and defensible in regulatory terms.
• The speed at which usage rotates: Social formats change quickly. A positioning anchored to a format rather than to a moment expires with it.

Deliverables

Objects teams can use beyond the engagement

• A map of the app's consumption moments.
• A reconstruction of usage sequences: what precedes and what follows opening.
• A redefinition of the competitive set by slot rather than by category.
• An explicit distinction between presence usage and matching usage.
• Positioning territories formulated in terms that are sayable in the market.
• The implications for the product proposition and for communication.

Key learnings

What this case makes clear

• A dating app is rarely opened in order to meet someone: it is opened at a moment.
• The competitor of a social app is everything occupying the same slot, not what sits in the same store category.
• Being with others and meeting someone are two distinct uses coexisting on the same platform.
• A moment can be observed, an intent is narrated: on these usages only the former is reliable.
• The real need — not being alone — cannot be claimed head-on; it has to be translated.
• A positioning anchored to a social format expires with it; one anchored to a moment lasts.

For comparable organisations

Where this approach is useful

This case will speak to organisations showing at least one of the following characteristics: A product or service whose usage is recreational and whose intent is barely explicit. A category whose boundaries do not match how users think. Competition arriving from outside the declared sector. A real need users articulate poorly or not at all. A market whose cultural codes cannot be read from a European head office. A positioning built on a format rather than on a moment. These situations recur in entertainment, gaming, media, quick-service food and every everyday product whose main competitor is available time.