It Is Difficult For Department Stores To Enter The "Internet Age".

Compared with the expansion rate of "big shops" of major department stores, Department store Industry "online shopping" appears to be somewhat late, rather cautious. Although there are pairs of self entities Management The reasons for this are more important. network Hesitation in shopping and uncertainty in control

With the impact of the online shopping platform such as Taobao and Dangdang on the retail industry, the entity business has been regarded as a king's department store industry.

Compared with the expansion of the "physical stores" of the major department stores, the online shopping business of the department stores seems to be a bit late, rather cautious. Although there are some reasons for the importance of its own entity management, it is more about hesitation and uncertainty in online shopping.

Department stores are "touching the net".

After putting forward the idea of collectivization to enter the online shopping business at the beginning of the year, in June 14th, Wangfujing department store issued a meeting document to convene the annual shareholders' meeting on the 29 th of this month. The document points out that the overall upgrading of e-commerce system will be promoted from this year, and the investment to build a complete online shopping platform will exceed 100 million yuan. 3~5 years later, the proportion of e-commerce in the company's business will increase significantly.

In addition, the new world department store also announced that its e-commerce platform has been put into trial operation, and the main products sold are self-employed goods in the mall.

Compared with the familiarity with entity management, the new world department store is very cautious about the operation of online business. It not only controls the price of self operated goods as the main product, but also sets up a specialized operation company for online business. It has independent entity store finance, production, customer service, logistics and distribution system.

It is not hard to see that the Department Store chiefs who have always been concerned about the expansion of the stores have begun to attach importance to the power of the network platform.

In this regard, assistant general manager of Wangfujing department store Li Shuqi said that the department store industry was limited to the entity store operation before, and its geographical location had great restrictive effects on its marketing revenue. Businesses have to do things in a variety of ways, but the cost of publicity is only a lot of money in each activity. Wangfujing department store tries to expand its market share through online shopping, with its mature logistics distribution and storage advantages, to reduce the constraints brought by geographical factors.

At the same time, he said: "Wangfujing occupies a small share of retail business in Henan, and is not familiar to most people. But its brand has a strong influence. Integrating existing marketing channels through the network platform is very positive for competition with other local department stores and developing Zhengzhou's consumer market.

Zhang Huiyu, President of the Henan Provincial Association of Commerce, said that the main customers of department stores are white-collar workers and older people. The main consumers of online shopping are the post-80s generation. These customers are the generation that is accompanied by the Internet. The high consumption behavior on the Internet drives the overall demand to be spanferred online. With the maturity of the main consumer groups and the improvement of the logistics network, the department store's online shopping will become the mainstream channel in the future.

The scale is not clear.

According to the statistics of China Electronic Commerce Research Center, the annual volume of domestic online shopping market will exceed 1 trillion yuan in the next two years, which will account for more than 5% of the total retail sales of domestic consumer goods.

Even experts predict that in the period of "12th Five-Year", the online shopping business will maintain the growth of 30%~40%, which will be far higher than the increase in the total retail sales of domestic consumer goods. Online shopping will become the main way for traditional retailers to make profits when domestic department stores generally adopt joint operation mode and profits are shrinking.

But compared with the enthusiasm of other regional department stores to test water online shopping, the Zhengzhou department store industry is still in a calm before the outbreak.

Reporters visited several large department stores, and their executives expressed enthusiasm for online shopping platforms, but few of them put them on the agenda. Zhang Shoujun, manager of the planning department of the Department of general merchandise, said that as early as 2007, there was already a plan to build an online shopping mall, but it only stayed on the level of oral confirmation. "This year, we will prepare to enter the online shopping mall and establish our own logistics center, 24 hour member center and data processing center."

"Online shopping is now getting louder and louder, and we do not rule out the future that we will also enter online shopping. But for Denis, entity management is the focus of our current work, which is still the focus of competition in department stores. Denis general manager Cai Yingde told reporters.

"The most important reason is the shortage of business management talents and the shortage of e-commerce talents." Wang Shouduo, manager of Human Resources Department of Da Shang Jin Da Dian, thinks so.

He said that there are still many constraints for traditional department stores to do online shopping: "traditional department stores have long-term advantages in purchasing, selling, warehousing and logistics, but there are still more department stores reluctant to enter the online shopping platform. The main reason is the increase in labor costs, such as technical personnel, extension personnel, especially a large number of logistics and distribution personnel. Besides, customer demand is also a consideration of department stores' reluctance to enter the online shopping market.

In this regard, Zhang Huiyu believes that the reason why Zhengzhou's local department stores have not seen any movement is more about controlling product prices. Even if department stores that have opened online shopping centers have more online sales, they are more self controlled brands that are easy to control. But after brand agents have been digested, the price of online shopping is difficult to control, and it is difficult to form orderly competition.

At present, the top ten e-commerce operators in China are pure network retailers. In the traditional retail sector, the department stores, which are thrived in the traditional retail industry, have to go beyond the mature operators.

In fact, as early as a few years ago, when online shopping was still new, experts in the industry said that e-commerce would be the future trend of the retail industry. The "touch net" of traditional department stores can be regarded as an active positive attempt, but the reality is very few. Even in the field of online shopping, the sales volume of online shopping of these department stores is much smaller than that of the entity store business, which is even more difficult to compare with the pure network retailers. If we can not break the current "tasteless food and abandon the pity" situation, the traditional department stores will be narrowing the way to online shopping.