Retail Situation Is Cruelty Chinese Characteristic O2O "Two Way Labor Pains"

When the Internet is coming like a flood, the traditional retail giants who have been enjoying the demographic dividend of China have been feeling anxious for time. Nowadays, O2O It has become the last straw of the traditional retail giants, but it is difficult to get rid of the last straw. As the main driving force of O2O practice in China, the O2O practice of electric providers is not going all the way. "Two-way labor pains" is a realistic state of O2O with Chinese characteristics. In the future, who will become the appendage of electric business and entity? But what we can predict is that the core of the retail industry is the consumer, and the consumer centered distributor must be the last winner.

Play: Eight Immortals crossing the sea

2014, absolutely. O2O The first year of the year. Now, look at the one billion big gamble of Lei Jun and Dong Mingzhu two years ago, it seems that the result is not so important. In the new business environment, any competition is no longer a zero sum game. When Internet companies bring the Internet gene into full play, retailers with retail genes are also not showing signs of weakness. Whether Suning, WAL-MART or Amazon, Taobao, O2O business model of the test is in full swing, it can be described as Eight Immortals crossing the sea, every show.

Retail O2O crossover mode

Homeopathic infiltration

As the main promoter of O2O practice in China, Online retailers There is nothing wrong with the smooth running of enterprises. Their common demand lies in solving their inherent defects in after-sale service, optimizing the user experience and creating a closed loop in the retail industry chain, thus further enhancing the consumers' willingness and confidence to consume online. Generally speaking, there are three ways of offline layout.

Set up self run experience store synchronized with e-commerce website. The vertical electric business "dream bazaar" has opened nearly 10 stores in Shanghai, Dongguan and Jiangsu after the first flagship experience shop was set up in the south end of Hua Dao Avenue South fishing street in Liwan District, Guangzhou in 2011. Coincidentally, in 2011, the first home decoration line Experience Hall of Taobao mall, the "Taobao mall, love bee tide" opened in Beijing. In 2013, jumei.com's front flagship store and Singapore Jingdong Tangshan square shop experienced trial operation.

From the operation mode of these entities, it is not for business purposes, mainly for brand image display, physical display, or user experience. Stores have terminal inquiries and support for two-dimensional code scan query comparison, products can basically guarantee the same price online and offline. The salesperson conducts unbiased guidance and consultation, partially supports online ordering and payment, returns online, and regularly organizes marketing activities that help enhance communication with consumers. To some extent, this mode can solve the problem of poor after-sale and poor experience of online businesses.

Cooperate with other offline entities. In the short term, the alliance between electric business enterprises and physical enterprises is the most economical way to test water O2O, and it is also the most popular way at present. In 2014, following the "double eleven", Alibaba joined the five major retail department stores, including Yintai, Yuehua City, new world, Hualian and Wangfujing, to create "mobile Taobao 3.8 Life Festival", and to promote online payment and offline consumption through the form of low subsidies. The 1500 brand counters in the offline shopping mall took part in this activity, which is an important move for Alibaba to enter the local life service field with the help of O2O. In addition, Jingdong also joined Tang Long convenience store to enter O2O, and signed with Wanjia convenience store and Beijing Hua Guan shopping center. The advantage of this cooperation mode is that it can guide offline consumers to scan the two-dimensional code for online ordering and payment, thus converting some offline consumers into online users, and forming a good interaction between online and offline.

Strategic investment or acquisition of entities under the line. The ability to integrate and control offline resources is critical to the successful practice of O2O. Compared with the alliance of e-commerce enterprises and entities, strategic investment or acquisition of offline enterprises can help enterprises to control and integrate the resources of entity enterprises. Therefore, the strategic investment or acquisition of offline entities has become a more direct way for electric business enterprises to enter O2O. In January 2014, Tencent invested in Southern China, a large business logistics company, and began negotiations with Southern China city's outlets and good hundred years home Plaza. In April 2014, Alibaba paid $692 million to acquire 35% stake in Yintai department. At the same time, it started the interoperability of the two member system and launched the "Yintai Bao" electronic membership card on the Alipay client. Recently, there is also news that Amazon will acquire large department store group Sears, once successful, Amazon will be able to control Sears's 2400 stores, and promote online and offline O2O unlimited shopping.

Reverse survival

Compared with the active penetration of e-commerce enterprises, O2O of retail entities is very passive. As a leader in the retail industry, department stores grew by an average of 4% in 2013, far from 16.5% in 2006-2011 years. Wangfujing, Tianhong, Ginza, Parkson and other large department store revenues returned to single digits, with a drop of more than 15%. Huge profits and pressure to survive forced retail entities to push the channel spanformation through O2O. One side is business expansion, the other is business spanformation. Obviously, from the two point of view to promote the original intention of O2O, the O2O road of retail entities seems to be even more difficult. At present, O2O of retail entities can be basically divided into three categories.

Through self built e-commerce platform to achieve "full channel" operation. In 2010, Suning Appliance was built on the line of its self built e-commerce platform suning.com, taking the "big household appliances and 3C products" as the breakthrough point, through the reform of entity store assessment system, to promote the operation of the online platform. Subsequently, it took the online platform as a breakthrough, and implemented the strategy of "de electrification". In 2012, it opened the first Suning Expo super store which operated all kinds of commodities, and realized the full opening, coordination and sharing of products, prices and logistics in the two platforms. In addition, Wangfujing, Yintai, Tianhong, Ginza, Parkson and other large department stores have built their own e-commerce platforms.

Cooperation with e-commerce enterprises. As mentioned above, as the leading business enterprise, therefore, the development of O2O basically depends on the products of Ali and Tencent. The core is the scenario and business settings with the main goal of passenger flow introduction. The operation contents usually include preferential, diversion, mobile payment, membership and management, and some enterprises extend to CRM management, data analysis and member precise management. For example, top quality discounts, rainbow and others have been working with WeChat in succession. Tang Long convenience also cooperates with Jingdong. However, from the specific results, the promotion of O2O strategy mostly focuses on the marketing level, rather than the real online and offline interactive channel operation, which has obvious deficiencies and personalized design in customer experience, and it is difficult to sustain.

Strategic investment and acquisition of e-commerce websites. In 2012, suning.com purchased the mother child B2C platform red child company for $66 million, and promoted the landing of red children in Suning shop. It became an important measure to promote the strategy of "de electrification". In the same year, WAL-MART increased the shareholding ratio of No. 1 store from 20% to 51% through the way of increasing capital and expanding shares, and realized the total holding of shop No. 1. Amazon is also planning to acquire Sears, a large department store.

Pain spot: O2O with Chinese characteristics, crossing the river by feeling the stones

Undoubtedly, O2O is one of the future forms of the electricity supplier, and it is also the only way out for the spanformation of the entity retail business. However, in the top ten electricity suppliers in the United States, pure electric business enterprises occupy only one seat, and the other nine are engaged in offline business. Its main promoter of O2O is physical retail, which is quite different from that of China. Therefore, for domestic retail entities and electric business enterprises, whether online penetration or offline spanformation to the online industry, the two are crossing the river in search of stones in O2O practice, facing various aspects such as channel conflict, cross-border management, logistics delivery and so on. Especially for the passive spanformation of physical retail enterprises, the reality is even more brutal.

The supply chain and logistics system failed to get through.

On the whole, whether it is an electric business enterprise or a retail entity, O2O sales need to be optimized through a series of links such as presentation of commodity information, pre sale distribution, payment in sales and after sale logistics distribution. Therefore, the most difficult and painful point of O2O practice is that the two parties are able to get through the online and offline supply chain and logistics system. This problem first manifests itself as inventory management and order management. Just imagine, under the full channel sales mode, customers' orders can be generated anywhere from retail, and can point to any stock point for goods to go out. This requires a unified arrangement and coordination of orders and inventory. In addition, we need to ensure the consistency of all channel customers' data so that customers can get the corresponding services and experience in any channel. At present, whether it is an electric business enterprise or a retail entity enterprise, the entity store of the electric business enterprise can only experience, has not established the supply chain system, and the existing supply chain system of the retail entity often can not cope with the pressure of the massive electronic commerce order. That is to say, the supply chain and logistics system of the two party are still completely independent systems, which are not enough to support their full channel operation. In addition, e-commerce enterprises and retail entities in the dynamic balance of the process of integration, also inevitably lead to the following pain.

Online to offline

Generally speaking, the offline layout of e-commerce enterprises is mainly achieved through two ways, one is self built, the other two is cooperation. However, judging from the current layout of the electric business enterprises, the operation and management of the experiential shop is the biggest problem for the way to build the own stores, and the way to cooperate with the retail entities is often faced with the problem of insufficient ability to control the partners' resources. There is no way to get both fish and bear's paw. The electricity supplier enterprises have to face the dilemma.

Experience store operation management. From the point of view set up by the current electricity supplier, most of them are located in the experiential shop. However, due to the characteristics of domestic electricity supplier driven by investment rather than profit driven and the rising operating costs of offline stores, it has been a long time since the "experience shop" positioning of e-commerce entities has been difficult to sustain. From the current expansion of the e-commerce entity store, the experience shop profit pattern is unclear, which has become one of the difficulties of O2O. In addition, because the experience store is different from the warehouse, once the massive implementation, its image design, decoration, spatial layout and other traditional retail enterprises are very familiar with the problem will become another problem facing the electric business enterprises.

Partner resources control. Compared with the control and mobilization of the enterprise and brand resources on the e-commerce platform, the e-commerce enterprises are obviously inadequate in controlling the resources of the partners in the process of cooperation with the offline enterprises. Taking Taobao mobile Taobao festival held in 2014 as an example, as an important activity of Taobao's water test O2O, its activities are not inferior to the "double eleven" activity, but its activity is effective.