Pick up and deliver in the same city, buy on behalf of others, help with errands... In recent years, with the continuous improvement of consumers' demand for instant time saving, real-time logistics in the form of errands is booming, and the market scale is growing rapidly.
From "food delivery" to "delivery of everything", consumers' demand for errand running services is becoming more and more personalized and diversified, and relevant policies and measures have been introduced to help the healthy and orderly development of the industry.
Forgot to bring items, use "errands" to help pick them up; Every New Year's holiday, call an "errand" to send flowers; Can't pull away, place an order for "errands" to help get the number... With the continuous improvement of consumers' demand for immediate time saving, errand running services have emerged to provide non-standardized new forms of services such as pick-up and delivery in the same city, purchasing items, and helping affairs.
Recently, the "2022 China Errand Economic Market Insight Report" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") released by relevant consulting institutions shows that the scale of China's errand economic market reached 2021.131 billion yuan in 2025 and is expected to reach 664.<> billion yuan in <>.
As a new form of service derived from real-time logistics, why is errand running service rising rapidly? How to continuously stimulate market potential? In response to these problems, the reporter conducted in-depth interviews.
From "food delivery" to "delivery of everything"
The service scenarios are wider and the demand is stronger
"It took 10 minutes to pick up the keys and 30 minutes later it was delivered to my parents' house, which was so convenient!" Recently, Mr. Li in Shanghai's Pudong New Area found that he had forgotten to return the key to the decoration of his new house to his parents, and sent him a round trip of nearly 30 kilometers, so he sent an order errand running service through Dada Express. "Door-to-door at the agreed time, delivered on time and safely, economical and trouble-free."
The strong demand for errand running services, Zhang Yanyan, a Meituan errand delivery worker in Beijing, feels very real. "Spring is just right, many consumers go out to enjoy the spring, and the number of errand orders sent to attractions has risen rapidly in recent days, and I have been running errands for more than 4,1000 kilometers in the city since April this year." Zhang Yanyan said that helping to send forgotten ID cards, helping to get parasols, queuing in advance, and running errands have brought convenience to users while also gaining the value of helping others.
"Hurry, busy, forgetting" in work and life has become a typical demand scenario for errand running services. The data shows that 38.4% of consumers use errands to help pick up and deliver items because they forget to bring them; 37.3% of consumers use errands to buy things; In addition, the demand for help queuing and sending documents is gradually increasing.
At the same time, errand running services have strong holiday attributes, and more consumers send gifts and help with errands through errand-running services to convey their hearts on important holidays. Data show that during this year's "March 8" International Working Women's Day, the number of flower cake delivery orders on the Dada Express platform nearly doubled year-on-year.
From the perspective of consumer groups, at present, consumers in first- and second-tier cities have gradually formed the consumption habit of errand running services, and consumers in third- and fourth-tier cities are gradually accustomed to using errand-running services to enjoy the convenience of life, among which, the post-80s and post-90s use services more frequently, and have become the main force of errand consumption. With the continuous expansion of the errand market and the growth of demand in small and medium-sized cities, errand running services will enter the daily life of more people.
"As an important part of real-time logistics, errand running services have strong efficiency, non-standard, regional and compound, which are mainly used to solve consumers' temporary cross-regional service needs in a small area." Wang Yuehan, director of the Industrial Economy Research Department of the Development Research Center of the State Post Bureau, introduced that from the perspective of service types, errand running services are roughly divided into 3 types of services, such as pick-up and delivery in the same city, buying in the same city, and helping to do errands, with the increase of consumer income level and personalized demand, the application scenarios of errand running services in the future will continue to expand to meet consumers' more immediate service needs.
Supply and demand continue to work in both directions
Errand running services have strong growth momentum
In just a few years, why has the rapid rise of errand-running services become an indispensable part of people's daily lives?
From the demand side, the outbreak of immediate demand and the acceleration of consumption upgrading together constitute a strong driving force for the continuous growth of errand running services.
"From catering take-out to retail supplies to errand running services, consumers' timeliness requirements for consumption are constantly increasing, and errand running services include pick-up and delivery in the same city, shopping in the same city and helping to do things, etc., which can meet the needs of consumers to stay at home and save time." According to the relevant person in charge of Dada, it is estimated that in 2022, the number of instant fulfillment and delivery orders in China will exceed 400 billion, and the scale of users will exceed 7 million, which reflects that consumers' demand for saving time and effort has gradually become a rigid demand.
In Wang Yuehan's view, with the improvement of the income level of Chinese residents and the gradual emergence of young people as the main force of consumption, people's requirements for life have changed from meeting basic needs to pursuing quality upgrades, and they have the ability and willingness to pay for services to obtain better products and a more relaxed life, which has planted a solid soil for the development of errand running services.
From the supply side, sufficient market capacity and logistics technological innovation strongly support the sustainable development of errand running services.
Service network boundaries are constantly expanding. Thanks to the more flexible employment methods, many errand platform enterprises have obtained a large number of employees in a short period of time through crowdsourcing, and have built a relatively extensive service network to support the development of large-scale and high-frequency errand running services. For example, Dada Express' local instant delivery business covers more than 2600,<> counties (districts and cities) across the country, and millions of riders provide services to consumers, building a full-scenario service system composed of instant distribution, landing distribution, and personal distribution.
The Instant Delivery experience continues to be optimized. Some errand running services rely on platform enterprises to organically integrate business flow, logistics and information flow, promote supply and demand docking by optimizing resource allocation, effectively reduce the search cost of merchants and consumers, and improve the real-time delivery logistics experience.
By transforming the process of traditional logistics "collection and transfer" into a direct delivery mode of "collection" and "dispatch", SF combines the layout of the front warehouse to shorten the delivery radius, achieve "average 1 hour" delivery in the whole city, and improve the efficiency of item distribution; Relying on Meituan's "super brain" delivery system, users can automatically complete order matching, route planning and time estimation after placing an order, estimate the delivery time for each order, assign the right rider, and design the appropriate pick-up and delivery route for the rider to ensure the consumer experience.
Service 15 minutes living circle
Develop towards diversification, specialization and orderliness
Flow is passing, and general is prosperous. In the interview, many enterprises and experts are optimistic about the development prospects of errand services in China, they said that in the future, with the rapid development of the local life service industry and the two-way force of supply and demand, errand services will play an important role in building a 15-minute life circle, and play an active role in facilitating people's lives and promoting the development of merchants.
From the initial emergence and rapid development of catering take-out scenarios, the scope of errand running services has gradually expanded from catering to retail categories such as supermarkets, daily use, and medicine, and further expanded to non-standard services. Wang Yuehan believes that from "delivering takeaway" to "delivering everything", when the habit of using errands to pick up and deliver items is basically developed, consumers have more personalized and diversified non-standard demand for errand running agency services, which will further promote the horizontal extension of service types.
In recent years, relevant policies and measures have been introduced to promote the healthy and orderly development of the industry. In August 2021, the Ministry of Commerce and other 8 departments issued the "Special Action Plan for the High-quality Development of Commerce and Logistics (9-2021)", which mentioned that it is necessary to improve the terminal distribution modes such as front-end warehouse distribution, store delivery, instant delivery, online order store pick-up, and self-service pick-up. In January 2025, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the "2022th Five-Year Plan for the Construction of Modern Circulation System" and proposed to improve urban distribution facilities and county and rural express logistics and distribution systems, and improve terminal network service capabilities.
Grasping the market development opportunities, many enterprises continue to make efforts in distribution efficiency and service quality, and expand the errand economy in better meeting the needs of segments. Meituan Errand Runner launched the "direct delivery" function, where riders only pick up and drop off one order throughout the process, so as to improve the delivery time and delivery safety of items. For key categories such as flowers and cakes, Dada Express is equipped with car delivery services, with an average delivery time of 20 minutes faster than electric vehicles.
As an emerging business format, the high-quality development of the errand economy still depends on continuously improving the service standard system and strengthening service quality testing and evaluation. Wang Yuehan proposed that due to the wide variety and wide range of errand running services, a regulatory mechanism that adapts to the development of new business formats of errand running services should be constructed, cross-departmental joint supervision should be strengthened, regulatory models should be innovated, the role of smart supervision and credit supervision should be fully utilized, and the standardized development of services should be continuously promoted to create a fair and orderly competition environment.
Han Xin, reporter of this newspaper
Han Xin, reporter of this newspaper