Can WAL-MART Rely Solely On The Use Of New Technologies To Help Them Break Through The Embarrassing Situation?

According to the world clothing and shoe net, the offline retail stores have not been living smoothly in recent years. Not only the domestic supermarket has closed a door, but also the Japanese convenience store, which is deeply rooted in the national culture, is facing an awkward predicament.

According to a data released by the Japan Franchise Association, the flow rate of convenience stores in Japan has slowed down since 5 years ago, and even continued to decline in the past year.

As a giant in the offline retail industry, it is impossible to avoid being affected. They have assessed about 11600 stores around the world and closed 269 stores.

At the investor conference in 2015, WAL-MART's market capitalization was slightly lower than Amazon's, which fell by 20 billion US dollars in a short time.

Neil Sanders, the chief executive of Conlumino consulting, said:

"The practice of WAL-MART closing the US stores represents a major change in the retail industry over the past few years, and physical stores are still very necessary at the moment, but the priority is not as good as before," he said.

WAL-MART did not have no electricity supplier. They set up their own online platform Walmart.com in 1996.

However, the content of the website has not been expanded since then. For 4 years, only the company's information has been displayed.

The retail giant has been catching up with the big business platforms for decades before gradually gaining a knack (its electricity business grew by 29% in the fourth quarter of 2016).

WAL-MART, who has benefited from the sweetness, is stepping up its pace. They have set up a technology incubator called Store NO.8 in Silicon Valley. With the help of this incubator, its business will be able to add personalized shopping options such as VR/AR, no delivery, artificial intelligence and so on.

However, can the use of new technologies alone help to break through the embarrassing situation? The answer is not yet.

The development of e-commerce business is mainly supported by the "traditional sector".

In the second half of last year, Ali advocated his own business.

The strategy not only invites the new black horse Magic Leap endorsement, but also demonstrates the "online shopping future" on the stage of Shopping Festival.

And when its actual application appears in double eleven, consumers can only feel the back of the head and show the "lace concept".

The fine modeling and interaction elements on HTC Vive are finally replaced by panoramic images in the mobile platform, and the goods contained in VR shopping are restricted to very few products in overseas stores.

Not only that, but the high demand for mobile bandwidth and traffic also makes shopping at any time and place become empty talk.

According to WAL-MART's outflow information, they currently have 172 large distribution points in the United States, and their activity space reaches 11 million square meters, which guarantees the delivery speed and delivery guarantee to a large extent.

On the other hand, they are relying on their strength to expand their "Hui Yi".

In order to ease the pressure of other online platforms and provide the foundation for their own e-commerce platform, we try to provide consumers with quality and cheap products directly.

The storage, logistics and commodity richness of traditional retail is still a hot spot in the competition of electronic business platform. WAL-MART has accumulated its own long-term accumulation in these areas, so it can gradually return to the second place of the US electricity supplier.

Virtual reality still can not afford retail business, and giants understand this truth.

Before WAL-MART opened the VR project, Amazon had already been playing in the VR field for several years.

Not only has bought the dying game engine development team Crytek, has launched the VR related Lumberyard, but also started recruiting early last year, seeking the reliable VR senior software development engineer.

However, Amazon does not seem to plan to put these resources into the business of e-commerce. They are mainly targeted at Twitch related live broadcasting business.

Although it is not possible to exclude Amazon from taking Twitch as its core, and thus developing VR digital shopping, it has not yet shown any signs.

Interestingly, WAL-MART has not yet regarded virtual reality as a center of the business of e-commerce.

According to a Bloomberg report, the aim of WAL-MART's incubator is to integrate all kinds of emerging technologies and put them into daily operation.

We can regard AR/VR as an optional interface for purchase environment. After obtaining orders, we plan the distribution route quickly by artificial intelligence and machine algorithm. Finally, the unmanned delivery team composed of robots completes the last link of the electricity supplier business.

From this point of view, virtual reality can be said to be a lighter weight.

How to change consumer behavior is the primary problem faced by emerging technologies.

VR can not change the format of the electricity supplier alone. What about the whole technology matrix? Although these technologies are still very "false" in some people's eyes, it is not the case.

Amazon's long-standing ambitions for automated supermarkets have introduced visual recognition and machine learning into quality control systems to reduce costs and enhance quality assurance.

The Jet.com purchased by WAL-MART also has its own commodity algorithm, which is biased towards the minimum pport cost accounting, and eventually pfers the savings to commodity discounts, which makes their prices lower than the market average price by more than 10%.

On the hardware side, the delivery robot has also made frequent appearances. Marble first brought his works to the streets of San Francisco, and Starship even took part in the drafting of the bill in Virginia, trying to make these four square small things go on the streets.

Although the progress of emerging technologies is not as fast as we think, retail companies such as Amazon and WAL-MART are trying to use these things to imperceptibly change people's consumption habits.

However, the two retail giants are taking different paths.

WAL-MART, a traditional retailer, has been on the road for many years. It may be blamed on its obsolete business models. They can not tolerate long-term investments that are not profitable.

But luckily, the huge volume eventually reversed it.

Amazon is moving farther away on the issue of consumer behaviour.

Amazon Go is a good example. Its free checkout system allows customers to get away directly after taking the goods in the context of visual sensing and machine learning. This is a more convenient experience.

New technologies, including virtual reality, can not be achieved overnight, but they are still an opportunity to change consumer buying habits. Although Amazon's progress in this field is faster, the current online retailing is still more traditional.

In addition, the single technological innovation is no longer the same as it used to be.

More interesting reports, please pay attention to the world clothing shoes and hats net.