Physical Retail Will Eventually Go To Death. Is This The General Trend?

In the year-end year-end shopping season, whether Christmas Carnival, "online Monday" rush to buy, or "black five" shopping, a lot of hoarding chops "party" will not spare their wallet, in addition to buy or sell, or "buy buy buy".

The relevant statistics show that at the end of 2018

In the middle of the season, in Britain and the United States

Sales continued to grow.

In sharp contrast, Britain and the United States create a record high rate of physical retail outlets.

Among them, it pioneered the first order by catalog and was regarded as the "era".

Sears, the "SEARS" of the US retail representative, declared bankruptcy protection at the end of 2018, which has cast a shadow over the declining traditional retail industry.

In the digital age, under the pressure of the electricity supplier, will the collapse of traditional physical retail enterprises fail and pformation will eventually collapse under the heavy pressure of the big business tycoons?

Shopping season plays a leading role

US consumers recorded a new retail sales record in 6 years at the end of 2018. The total retail sales increased by 5.1% over the same period from November 1, 2018 to December 24, 2018, and the retail sales exceeded 850 billion US dollars.

News from CNBC, a US financial and media firm, shows that the online shopping retail industry in the US is even more striking, creating 2 billion 500 million orders.

Online sales of e-commerce increased 26.4% year-on-year between Wednesday and Friday before Thanksgiving.

Analysts say the US stock market downturn and partial government shutdown did not curb consumer confidence and budgets.

On the contrary, the growth of online online shopping sales has led to the prosperity of the year-end shopping.

According to the world clothing and shoe net, the "Internet Monday" in 2018 has become the largest online shopping day in US history. Online sales reached $7 billion 900 million within a day, while shoppers spent $6 billion 200 million on "black Friday".

By contrast, the overall chopping strength of British consumers at the end of 2018 is not as good as in previous years, but it is also very good.

According to media reports, on December 26, 2018, Boxing Day, British consumers spent about 4 billion 750 million pounds, 3 billion 710 million of which came from physical store sales and 1 billion 40 million pounds from online consumption.

Although the amount of online consumption is less than that of physical stores, the year-on-year growth rate is as high as 20%.

Meanwhile, the number of customers who go shopping on the street has dropped by 6.2%, the biggest drop in recent years.

According to CNBC, the consumption of American consumers online was as high as 453 billion dollars in 2017.

From the global perspective, the demand for online shopping is still very large: the growth rate of online demand in Europe is 10 times that of physical sales; the e-commerce market in Southeast Asia is also developing rapidly; in just 2017-2018 years, its market size has risen from $10 billion 900 million to $23 billion 200 million.

As the largest e-commerce market in the world, online consumption figures in 2017 were two times more than that in the United States, totaling more than 1 trillion dollars.

At the same time, the proportion of online sales in total sales in China and the United States has been rising.

Traditional retail is difficult.

In sharp contrast to the booming, fast growing electricity supplier, the decline of traditional physical retail is declining.

Looking back at the Anglo American traditional retail business in 2018, the most grim thing is the bankruptcy petition of two old stores, Toys R & C and Sears stores.

In the new year, the great challenges faced by British and American traditional retailers have not diminished.

Fortune magazine even reported that Sears's bankruptcy will be the biggest misfortune of e-commerce in promoting the retail industry as a benchmark for the retail industry of several generations of Americans.

It is not just individual large retailers. In the past 3 years, american apparel brand American Apparel, Australian apparel brand QUIKSILVER, the United States largest chain parity shoe store Payless, American women's clothing NASTY GAL, the United States high-end Cowboy brand TRUE RELIGION have gone bankrupt, and the attack on the entire traditional retail trade in the US can be imagined.

In 2017, the retail store closed by the United States was a record high.

Outside the US, the retail sector in Singapore and Britain is also in a low state.

In the UK, nearly 6000 stores closed in 2017, equivalent to 16 stores closed every day.

Chinese model or future

Compared with the traditional retail outlets in Europe and the United States, the late Chinese retail industry is reconstructing the new mode of commercial retail and exploring new ways of survival.

China is the largest e-commerce market in the world. The United States ranks second, while the sum of other countries and regions in the world accounts for 1/3 of global online sales.

Although European and American electricity providers are aggressive, compared with the "double eleven" Shopping Festival in China, the above figures are not worth mentioning: Alibaba only traded 30 billion 800 million dollars on the "double eleven" in 2018.

A group of western mainstream media, represented by Fortune magazine, believes that the mode of China's technology giants represented by Alibaba and Tencent is the future of global business.

Both fortune and Forbes believe that understanding the investment and business strategies of Alibaba and Tencent and their influence on global spread are crucial to understanding the future development of business.

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Among them, the western media focuses on the simultaneous growth of the online and offline business models represented by Ali.

This change in China's retail industry symbolizes the future direction.

Balun weekly also published an article saying that this business mode has made rapid and in-depth digital pformation of Chinese offline consumers, and the effect is remarkable.

Rasinski, executive editor in chief of Fortune magazine, thinks that China's technology giants represented by Alibaba have achieved large-scale cross sectoral collaboration and reconstructed all aspects of the upstream and downstream sectors of the retail industry. In these respects, Amazon and WAL-MART are both dwarfed.

The core concept of new retail should not be further divided into two channels: online and offline. For users, they should be an organic whole with close connection and interaction.

Best buy counterattack is extraordinary.

Today, the problem of traditional retailing in Europe and the United States is that WAL-MART and home depot, which are more scientific in the way of physical retailing, are confronted with the omnipotent suppression of Amazon and other electronic commerce giants when they attempt to enter online retailing.

With the rise of electricity providers in recent years, the traditional physical retail industry, including Sears, has had a huge impact, plus the failure of its own strategic choice. It has lost a large area of competitive products, and has increased a lot of business lines that are dragging the company's development.

In this way, the future of physical retailing is indeed worrying.

However, just before the bankruptcy and liquidation of Sears's department store, it submitted a takeover offer, which seemed to enable the former US retail giant who had reached the brink of bankruptcy to continue to survive in 2019.

However, there is still a lot of bright spots in the traditional retail industry, which stands for the impact of the electricity supplier such as Amazon, and the Best Buy, which creates the strategic advantage of business alienation. It may bring some inspiration and hope to physical retail.

Before and after 2012, best buy was hit by Amazon. Many people including best buy executives thought that best buy was going to go bankrupt.

However, this situation has not happened, and best buy has achieved a comeback in the next few years.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek analyzed the three strategies of best buy in the best buy's counterattack. The first strategy was that best buy solved the plight of the exhibition hall and carried out the electronic operation of the store.

The so-called plight of exhibition hall is to buy goods in a physical store, and then go home and place orders on Amazon.

Best buy's solution is to announce that the price of best buy will be the same as that of Amazon and more than 10 other e-commerce platforms.

Although this decision is at the expense of best buy's profit, it also greatly offset the price advantage of the electricity supplier and grabbed the customer from Amazon.

In terms of the operation of the electronic commerce, the aim of best buy is to have Amazon and buy best buy.

You know, one of Amazon's trump cards is to collect annual fees and free delivery services to consumers, while best buy not only doesn't charge annual fees, but also allows most online shopping products to be delivered free of charge within two days, as fast as Amazon's.

Not only that, best buy also integrated inventory and related intelligent applications. When consumers place orders online, they can either deliver by best buy or go to stores.

This improves the efficiency of distribution, and consumers can get the goods as soon as possible.

Best buy's second strategy is to provide door-to-door service to consumers, Personal Chief Technology Officers.

The main job of a personal CTO is to help consumers implement smart home solutions, or help and even teach consumers how to better use existing products, and all services are free.

This service is not one-time.

Best buy's demand for door-to-door staff is also very clear. Apart from having a high degree of professionalism, it can not give consumers the feeling of being promoted.

For this reason, best buy also stipulates that the chief technology officer of the individual does not earn a yearly salary.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek gives an example of this: a consumer's home TV is broken and contacted by personal chief technology officer of best buy.

But after being diagnosed by the chief technology officer, he told the consumer that the cost of maintenance could buy a new TV set.

The consumer agreed to change the new one and asked when the new TV could be delivered. This time it was already 10 o'clock, and the reply of best seller's chief technology officer was 11 points.

This speed can catch up with China.

As the last national electric chain in the United States, the successful counterattack of best buy represents an attempt of the traditional retail industry to relocate in the tide of the times.

Best buy is not only Amazon, but also how to achieve self subversion in the face of change.

Just as Hubert Jolly, the boss of best buy, said that traditional retailers had to compete with Amazon to do what Amazon couldn't do.

In addition to the above advantages, best buy has another advantage: Amazon does not have more than 1000 large stores.

An interesting trend is that many retailers are expanding their offline stores. Amazon has opened about 20 physical bookstores, at least 6 Amazon convenience stores, and Amazon's four-star store on Amazon's website.

Although sales data of physical stores are not as pleasant as online sales data, there is evidence that shoppers in physical stores will eventually buy more from the online platform.

It can be seen that the key and advantage of e-commerce is to set up a physical store to collect more data on shopping behavior for the technology giants on data collection, which will help giants to provide better services for online and offline consumers.

Looking back at the Anglo American traditional retail business in 2018, the most alarming thing is the bankruptcy petition filed by two old stores, Toys R & C and Sears stores.

In the new year, the great challenges faced by British and American traditional retailers have not diminished.

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