A Case Study of Strategic Management and Cost Control Based on the Business Battles in Chinese Food Delivery Industry

The Chinese take-out industry presents the explosive growth in recent years, the size of the market in 2024 has reached 1.6357 trillion yuan, industry increased permeability to 28%. In this rapidly expanding market, platform enterprises such as Meituan and JD.com are engaged in fierce competition for market share, vying for market dominance through diversified strategies including price subsidies, capacity optimization and ecological layout. This article starts from the perspectives of strategic management and cost control, and uses the theory of platform economy and the framework of policy analysis to deeply explore the internal mechanism of competition in the food delivery industry. Research reveals that the current industry competition is essentially a battle for the dominance of high-frequency traffic entry points and the instant retail ecosystem under the background of the digital economy. Its driving forces mainly come from three aspects: the contradiction between the fading of the e-commerce traffic dividend and the potential of the instant retail market, the competition rules reconstructed by technological innovation, and the dual constraints of policy regulation and social responsibility. Through a comparative analysis of the two major platforms, Meituan and JD.com, in terms of pricing strategies, user stickiness cultivation and social responsibility practices, this article not only demonstrates the uniqueness of platform economy competition, but also provides beneficial thoughts for the standardized development of the industry.