Traditional Retail Stagnation, Black Friday Need Not Come To China?

　　 Holiday economy The essence is oxytocin economy.

Why do people need "black Friday"?

As we all know, the United States is the world's largest retail country, more than 4 trillion and 600 billion dollars in 2013. But the total amount is one thing, increments is another matter. In fact, the retail sales in the US shopping season increased by 2.9% annually in the 2003-2013 years. The proportion of retail sales accounted for 20% of the total retail sales at the end of the year, and the vertical ratio did not change much. After all, it was Thanksgiving Day, Christmas day, and new year's day. The sales were higher than that of the new year. It's the same as the proportion of GDP in the fourth quarter of the year in China, which is the new year's day and the Spring Festival. In other words, "black Friday" has nothing to do with economic growth, nor does it help global sales.

Why do people still need "black Friday"? Because people like impulse spending, impulse consumption is a form of experience economy. Just like women's oxytocin, concentrated shopping and impulse shopping can lead to a very happy shopping experience. This is the same as WAL-MART and other self selected shopping malls, so that when you choose freely, rational consumption is mixed with more sensibility. For the retail industry with a net profit margin of only 2%-3%, the profits generated by these impulse consumption are very important.

"Double eleven", or even everyday shopping, does it not? Women's wardrobe contains quite a few clothes that have not been worn several times, how much is impulse consumption?

However, at the same time, we also see that with the constant popularization of online shopping, the stimulation and frequency increase of various kinds of stimuli on the Internet will reduce the intensity of impulse shopping sooner or later. Therefore, China's "double eleven" or American "cyber Monday" will eventually become a regular part of life.

For example, Ali's "double eleven" sales, though very high, are just 8-10 times the average consumption of Ali. In the US, the sales volume of its "network Monday" was 1 billion 700 million dollars in 2013, when the average daily sales volume of the US network was over 700 million dollars. Moreover, all short-term discounts are rascals. Taking the United States last year as an example, the average discount on Thanksgiving Day is 24%, while black Friday is 23% and Monday Monday is 20%.

Because of this, consumers' oxytocin and hormones are no longer easy to mobilize: according to a new survey conducted by the National Retail Federation of the United States this year, 67 million 600 thousand of consumers said they would shop on Thanksgiving weekend, a slight decrease compared with last year.

Any marketing means is taking advantage of the weakness of human nature, and the utilization of any human weakness will return to stability and return to the essence of business and society.

　　 Online retailers From slaughter to strangulation

Then, under the impact of the electricity supplier, what will happen to the retail business nature of the future? Where is the future stability?

First of all, we must see that the recently released Ali, Jingdong, poly America and vip.com earnings show that their growth rate may decline further. Although the absolute number is still high, most of them "just reached expectations" or even failed to meet expectations; in the United States, the situation is similar to that of Amazon.

This is because they are all seeking profits. For example, Jingdong, whose gross profit margin has been flying at an ultra-low altitude close to 3%, has now risen to a sizable interval of 10% - and accordingly, Jingdong is no longer cheap. The only thing left is faster logistics and more convenient shopping experience. Over the same period, the impact of Gome's offline stores has also been greatly reduced, returning to profitability track. Only Jingdong online is a larger Gome, which is an upgraded version of Gome. This upgraded version means that the total user volume is bigger, and it can have more POP space, and more room for expansion of financial and virtual operators.

In fact, we look at Amazon, its gross margin has been maintained at around 20%, the naked traditional retail industry gross margin level, simply can not say what price war. Its net profit is low, and it often loses money because of huge investment and multiple attacks.

Then, the essence of returning to retail is actually the competition of supply chain level, the competition of cost and the competition of passenger volume. But with the addition of the electronic business platform, the essence of these businesses has become different, because the electricity supplier means crossing the original limitation of time and space, and possibly reducing the cost of commercial real estate.

Therefore, although the nature of retail has not changed, the characteristics of the electricity supplier still seem to have obvious "generation" advantages. Even if we abandon the previous meat cutting price war, these advantages will not be affected.

Take China as an example, since the beginning of this year, the total sales volume of all the top 100 retailers in the country has been seriously stagnated, while online shopping is still advancing vigorously. Not only that, most of the department stores have been closed shop, even Carrefour and WAL-MART are no exception, and online Ali and Jingdong are becoming more and more skilled.

This phenomenon is not the exception in the United States. Although the retail businesses in the US are far more powerful, they can not prevent Amazon from growing by about 20% a year, and become the top ten retailers in the United States. Take WAL-MART, the world's number one retail giant, for example, its revenue growth in the third quarter is only 3%, because each local sales account for more than 70%, which indicates the stagnation of its local sales. Most of the following WAL-MART's clog, Taghit and home depot can hardly exceed 5% growth.

Microscopically, the same is true of macroscopically. In the first half of 2014, China's online retail sales accounted for 8.4% of the total social consumer goods. It seems that the total number is not so terrible. However, you think from a different angle: most retail enterprises can only maintain 2-3% profit margins. If their total sales volume can not increase, the rent and manpower cost will only rise slightly, and the enterprises will fall into a loss situation. That is to say, the total labor cost of about 10% will increase by 20%, or the total cost of 10%-20% will increase by 10% a year, and many shops will lose money.

Therefore, even if the game of electricity providers return business In essence, traditional retailing will still face the Davies double kill of total sales stagnation and gross margin decline. In this way, "black Friday" does not need to come to China, and its evening clock is getting closer in the United States.