How Should Retailers Cope With Changes In Retailing In The Next Ten Years?

Retail sales totaled 26 trillion and 200 billion yuan in 2014, nominal growth of 11.9%. This level has remained relatively stable over the past few years.

The increase in total consumption will be accompanied by greater consumption expectations: a recent report by Accenture shows that 55% of consumers want to receive the goods purchased within 24 hours or less after the order is placed, and the demand for Chinese consumers to take services from online ordering stores is also increasing.

Unfortunately, many of these needs are related to a series of new services that many retailers have not yet provided in China.

The rise of China's e-commerce retailing poses a threat to traditional retailers and brings opportunities to them.

According to the China Chain Store Association, 59 traditional retailers have opened up online businesses in China, even though retail sales account for only a relatively small part of the entire online retail industry.

Traditional retailers will further welcome the technological revolution.

They will not only increase their online business, but also strive to diversify their payment solutions, while facilitating customers' convenience and centralized shopping experience through cooperation with mobile payment players.

For example, in December 12th last year (also known as "double sales day"), customers could use Alipay in selected supermarkets, convenience stores, restaurants and enjoy premium value.

This kind of cooperative relationship between traditional stores and e-commerce players will enable all channel retailers to reach a new level in China.

Xiao Xu, director of sales in Manhattan, said: "the environment facing retailers in 2015 is a sign of significant changes in the industry.

We see that there are five major areas of relevance that retailers need to think about, only in this way can retailers face the market and make profits in 2016.

The five key areas are:

1. authorized to retail assistant

2. create a virtual stock pool.

3. reduce return loss

4. welcome millennial generation driven innovation

5. pay attention to each order.

Solving these problems will help retailers strengthen customer relationship, which in turn will enhance customer loyalty and profitability.

With proper methods and support systems, retailers can also protect and improve profits.

Customers use all available sales channels to purchase products, and hope that these services and information can be sustained.

Whenever problems arise, I hope to be able to solve them in stores.

"I tried to buy this on the Internet, but it didn't work" or "I was told that I would receive this today, but I haven't received it yet."

When retail assistants face such problems, they can make things better or worse - so we need to provide them with tools to make things better.

Few of the shop staff know about store storage outdoor inventory or customer paction history and purchase preference.

But once the back-end system is connected, it is not so difficult to pass this information on to the shop assistant.

This can be implemented on smart phones, tablet computers or store computer terminals.

We see that many fast fashion retailers have implemented the following plan: the clerk can check the back-end inventory information through remote devices and serve customers in the store.

This information helps answer and solve customer problems and brings cross selling or upward selling opportunities at the same time, all of which are done before customers leave the store.

Many retailers experience the pain of being out of stock.

If the customer can not purchase the actual stock that can be purchased, there will be no winner.

It is necessary to use any inventory source to execute orders, regardless of the location of the source.

According to McKinsey report 4, this can not only cultivate customer loyalty, but also improve profitability, while reducing the cost of 45%.

Products should be tracked throughout the lifecycle of the product, whether they are in warehouses or storeroom, on lorries or on shelves.

A single stock pool combined with customer order management system enables shops, warehouses, logistics service providers and manufacturing suppliers to work closely together to deliver products to consumers in an advantageous way to facilitate consumers' time and place.

Decision making process, channel specific service level and stock critical value will become more complex.

For example, when deciding whether to deliver goods from a store, the display inventory and reserve inventory should be calculated in store inventory.

All warehouse inventories, whether as an online inventory of individual products or stock allocated to stores in the pallet, should be considered as part of a single stock pool, which can be redistributed at any time and anywhere when the sales need is fulfilled.

Effective management of the return process is the biggest determinant of profitability in online sales, which can be extremely frustrating, because no one likes losing sales opportunities.

The more frustrating thing is that you lose two or more times on the same product.

It may take weeks to return goods from stores to reproduced logistics processes that can be resold.

For example, although the amazing online sales data show that Alibaba's Tmall sells more than 8 billion 200 million dollars on singles day, according to Sandy Shen, an analyst at Gartner Inc.5, a market research firm, the industry estimates that about 25% of online shopping products are returned.

Many of the best sellers are in the reverse supply chain, not only invisible to the rest of the business, but also not available to customers, regardless of the demand for the product.

Supply brings sales, and more full price sales bring more profits.

The idea of a single inventory pool and the order management system using this concept should be extended to the reverse supply chain.

Once this step is in place, there is a way to increase sales. Otherwise, sales opportunities may be lost.

If it was about 20 years ago,

This idea may be laughable, but now the whole industry is ordering the business online and exploring the next opportunity.

Those hugs

Retailers with effective management of all channels are today's winners and have won significant competitive advantages.

Where will this lead us to?

Frankly, no one knows.

But the key is that the winners in the future will be those that can best utilize the future direction of the business revolution.

It may be the use of big data to analyze social media hotspots in real time, and make proposals based on locations and trends.

It may be a large number of customer service solutions, which provide customers with help to enhance customer relationship.

And executable information of profitability.

It may also be the introduction of more concept stores or new delivery capabilities.

These strategies will become more and more popular as the purchasing power of the Y generation grows.

Suppliers will need to make use of all available tools so that they can quickly seize and profit from new purchase channels.

Catering to the digital lifestyle of the millennial generation will be one of the road to success in the coming year.

No one can determine what the future of retailing will be, but knowing the location of a stock and displaying, selling and delivering inventory will never change. It will change how retailers need to prepare for modern, flexible and evolving technological capabilities.

Customer focus is the main way to achieve success in the current retail environment.

Customers can choose between two aspects of availability and price, and loyalty is harder to obtain and maintain than before.

Some retailers may be "lost" under the challenge of new initiatives and eventually ignore customers.

As consumers know more and more about technology, they want to have all the information.

Because of this, retailers will have to make a difference in new channels, provide more delivery and return options, and be responsible for their customer service and communication.

Inventory availability refers to when the customer knows when he can buy the product.

A series of execution options enable customers to receive the product in the most convenient way.

Now there are so many cycles around customers, so it is very important to make the process and experience as convenient as possible.

For retailers, it is too simple to work out a process and then think that "one's own business is over".

Nevertheless, what happens if people who take orders in the store have to wait 40 minutes before receiving the goods? They will no longer use the online booking service.

This is just a case in which customer service can ensure the success of new processes and initiatives.