B2C Enterprises Accelerate Department Store &Nbsp, And Many Sons Are Not Blessed.

2010 has become the major

B2C: comprehensive acceleration from vertical pformation

Recently, Amazon President Wang Hanhua repositioned his company's business objectives: "

Just when the Amazon decided to become a "genuine department store", its old rival --

Not only Dangdang, but as early as last March, the largest 3C store in the B2C market started in China in March, the Jingdong mall acquired the online shopping mall, thousands of searches, and made every effort to enter the department store market after obtaining the total financing amount of about $150 million for the third round.

Previously, the red child, a website specializing in mother and infant products, is now pformed into a department store that includes cosmetics, household products, health products, and so on.

More and more unknown small and medium-sized B2C enterprises also claim to push into "online department store City".

According to the Research Report on market impact assessment of B2C e-commerce website (2010) released by Ai Rui, the trend of department store in B2C website is accelerating.

An analysis report of Analysys International pointed out that B2C e-commerce has turned around the "department store", which is becoming more and more intense, and is becoming a trend in the industry.

Seeking new niche, B2C enterprise loves online department store.

Why do many vertical B2C e-commerce enterprises diversify their businesses? They have extended their tentacles to retail stores. In the past, most e-commerce enterprises sell books and audio-visual products on the Internet. However, with the increasingly fierce market competition, the net interest rates of books, audio-video products and other products are getting lower and lower, which many e-commerce enterprises regard as "chicken ribs".

As we all know, online retail bookstore, audio-visual as a major mode of B2C, the main source of its profit is still the difference between the sales price, but due to the rampant piracy of books and audio-visual market, the profit margin of online book and audio sales industry is getting lower and lower, and the logistics cost of oil and steam, labor and so on is also rising.

With more and more competitors involved in online retail bookstores, audio-visual market, many enterprises have reached the dilemma of making ends meet.

Although China's online shopping book market share grew by 96% last year, as a result of its performance, Dangdang, the market leader of online bookstores, accounted for 84.2% of its total business in the first 9 months of last year, with a gross profit margin of only 22%. It was almost half of the main online clothing store Mcglaughlin.

What is even more embarrassing is that Dangdang realized its first profit in 2009, with a net profit margin of 1.2% and a mere 3% in 2010.

According to AI survey data, the average gross profit margin of China's B2C market is only about 10% ~ 15%, and some types of parity margins such as books and electronic products are even less than 5%.

Under such circumstances, only by expanding a broader market and having richer commodity categories can we ultimately rely on the advantages of large-scale operation to achieve long-term sustainable profitability as soon as possible.

At present, the domestic single vertical market capacity is not big enough to feed many similar B2C websites, while department stores provide more opportunities for B2C websites to obtain more living space.

Although the price of 3C and household appliances is high, the rate of repeat purchase is low, while the profit rate of daily merchandise is high. Especially for clothing, the gross profit is over 50%, and the rate of repeat purchase is high and demand is huge.

Now, with the continuous improvement of domestic consumers' income, they no longer pay attention to those single and low price products. Their demand is becoming more and more abundant. More and more people are willing to try to buy high-end products on the Internet, such as jewelry, high-end cosmetics, home and so on.

Therefore, in order to cope with the diversification of Internet users' needs and increase the viscosity of users, B2C enterprises with strong conditions can increase more commodities and create more new niche to pform pressure and acquire new strategic fulcrum.

As early as two or three years ago, Amazon and Dangdang sniffed diversified scale utility and broad commercial flavor. "Jealous" Taobao, learning Taobao, took the lead in the pformation process, and embarked on the road of department store, accelerating the pformation of the traditional vertical B2C mall to the comprehensive sex city.

Amazon sells books from that year to the world's largest online retailer. Its sales volume has already surpassed the audio and video books.

Last year, department stores accounted for more than 50% of the total sales. It was this proportion that made it completely free of books and audio-visual sales.

The pain of pformation: "many sons are not blessed."

Although the B2C mall is actively pforming, turning to the all-around B2C, calling it "China's largest online shopping mall", calling it to cope with the needs of the future and becoming bigger and stronger, but things are not as easy as they imagined. The "big and comprehensive" comprehensive online shopping mall can not be built overnight, and the frustrations and hardships are far beyond what they predict. This will be a long march.

"Large and complete" online department stores can bring sales to increase effectively, but this also poses great challenges and pressures to logistics and warehousing, and it is still a problem whether profits can be effectively increased.

Only logistics and warehousing can keep up with the order quantity.

At present, the cost of logistics and warehousing is still high, and the cost of marketing is high. This is a big problem for B2C enterprises, especially small and medium-sized B2C enterprises.

Jingdong mall official said, because Jingdong mall in logistics and warehousing on a large investment, on the books until 2013 to be profitable.

The other end of the all-around B2C and "big and all" online shopping mall, including logistics, warehousing, supply system and platform structure, are all decisive factors in the success or failure of the relationship.

Of course, the most important thing is the capital problem. Adequate cash flow is a necessary guarantee.

Those B2C companies that originally focus on subdivision will risk losing their core competitiveness if they go all the way to diversification.

After the pformation, they should not only be more than C2C Taobao, which integrates millions of different sellers' sources, but also continue to compete with their original competitors.

Li Guangdou, a well-known marketing expert, believes that in real stores, stores and large shopping malls have their own value and necessity. The Internet also needs to be "experts". The Internet needs comprehensive network operators, and also requires B2C vertical. However, a swarm of people will not get the best of the competition.

A large number of B2C enterprises have threatened to become "Taobao of online department stores", which will inevitably lead to price killing and challenge to service capabilities and other aspects.

Needless to say, in the minds of many e-commerce enterprises today, "bigger is not necessarily strong; it is not necessarily not strong enough to do so; the idea of being diversified" is gradually prevailing.

But a question that B2C pformation people should seriously consider is how can the brand characteristics be reflected after the pformation? How to avoid homogenization? How can the market environment be good? How can we do well in marketing promotion? How long will it take to succeed in pformation, 3 years, 5 years or 10 years? In fact, the road of B2C pformation is very challenging, and the growth of vertical B2C mall needs nearly 10 years, let alone a "big and complete" online supermarket.

Many sons are not blessed.

On the Internet, the powerful Internet companies do not mean that they can be heard in other industries unfamiliar with.

Take traditional entity enterprises as an example.

From a global perspective, the success of diversification strategy is still rare.

Among the top 10 of the world's top 500, only the United States General Company has successfully realized the diversified development in a real sense, and the companies that adhere to the professional strategy and succeed are numerous: Microsoft, NOKIA, Samsung, Qualcomm...

Diversification has its positive side, but the negative factors are also obvious. B2C enterprises must not be aggressive. The historical experience and lessons have been told to the industry countless times. Diversification must be very careful and comprehensive. Look at yourself carefully, correctly assess the internal and external environment, do not have seven or eight points to grasp and cannot enter, or the party can stand in the market undefeated.