Amazon'S Closure Of 87 Flash Stores: Analysis Of The Development And Trend Of The New Retail Industry In The World

Recently, the global retail giant Amazon said it will close all its 87 flash stores in the United States in April this year, but the exploration of the offline business mode has not stopped. In the future, more 4-StarStore stores and more Amazon bookstores will be set up, and dozens of new grocery stores will be set up across the United States.

Obviously, Amazon is still very optimistic about the development prospects of new retail, and the pformation of physical retail is still continuing.

Not only Amazon, WAL-MART, Starbucks, Kroger and other traditional American retailers are also increasing their layout in the new retail sector, opening up online and offline to find a breakthrough.

Enterprises in other countries are also actively involved, and the development of new retail industry is in the ascendant.

Rapid development of new retail industry worldwide

In recent years, with the change of global consumption demand, consumption channels and consumption patterns, the era of rapid growth of global retail sales has passed, and the slowdown in retail sales is a clear trend.

Data show that the total retail sales increased slightly in 2013-2017 years, and the total retail sales in 2017 amounted to US $25 trillion and 110 billion, up 5.59% over the same period last year.

Total retail sales and growth in 2013-2018 years (unit: trillion dollars,%)

Against this background, new retail came into being to break through the bottleneck of traditional retailing.

Before the emergence of the new retail business model, the global retail industry went through four iteration revolutions of department stores, chain stores, supermarkets and electronic commerce. Every revolution promoted the further development of the retail industry, and the new retail business was the fifth retail revolution.

The four revolution in global retailing

Compared with traditional retail, new retail is different in six aspects: Retail main role, retail output content, retail organization form, retail activity relationship, retail business concept and retail technology application. It emphasizes consumer experience as the center, technological innovation as the driving force, and focuses on reducing the cost and increasing efficiency of the industry.

Six characteristics of new retail

At present, new retail has swept across countries and regions around the world. There are three main driving factors behind its development: first, the rise of global new generation consumption.

This audience group has a certain level of education and income, strong acceptance of new things, and high degree of digitally.

With the increase of purchasing power and the enrichment of information access channels, the mainstream consumer groups gradually change from price appeal to quality appeal, and are more willing to pursue personalized consumption, differentiated consumption and experiential consumption. Shopping has unique channel characteristics.

Second, technology is still the first driving force for new retail development.

With the growing maturity of 5G, AI, cloud computing, Internet of things, mobile Internet, big data, VR and other new generation of information technology, the threshold of application of new technologies has been greatly reduced. Some enterprises take the lead in applying the latest technology to promote the pformation and upgrading of traditional retail digitalization and achieve double enhancement of operational efficiency and consumer experience.

In particular, 5G, the energy for future economic growth can not be underestimated. IHSMarkit predicts that by 2035, the potential economic value created by 5G in the world will reach US $12 trillion and 300 billion, and the global 5G value chain will reach US $3 trillion and 500 billion output.

With the good fermentation of 5G network to the business economy, the new retail sector will undoubtedly benefit significantly.

Economic output of global 5G industry in 2035 ($trillion)

Finally, the major retail giants in the world are competing for the layout to jointly promote the rapid development of the new retail industry.

Taking Amazon, which started with the article, for example, it began exploring the offline business mode in 2015, opened a physical Bookstore - Amazon books, and then launched small entity convenience stores and Amazon Go entity grocery stores.

At the same time, Amazon also spent $13 billion 700 million to buy a full grain supermarket and bought a 5% stake in the offline retail giant Shoppers Stop for $27 million.

Amazon's new retail layout in 2015-2019 years

In addition to these factors, policy factors are also crucial for new retail development.

For example, with the introduction of the new retail concept, China quickly increased its policy support for new retail business: in November 2016, the State Council officially promulgated the "opinions on promoting pformation and innovation of entity retail"; in January 1, 2019, the e-commerce law of People's Republic of China was formally implemented.

In general, under the combined influence of various factors, the new retail industry in the world is in a stage of rapid development, and the future is promising.

Technology will still be the first driving force.

According to the current development status, the new retail industry in the world will present the following main trends: first, the small format will occupy the mainstream, such as convenience stores, discount stores, community stores, unmanned retail outlets, etc. Although the stores are small, the standardization level of stores is very high, and it has a very strong scale expansion capability.

Two, technology is still the first driving force for new retail development.

The emergence of new retail itself is the result of the increasingly mature technology of mobile Internet, Internet of things and big data. With the 5G, AI, AR/VR, biometrics, image recognition, robotics and other technologies more mature, the application threshold is greatly reduced, and new technologies emerge in endlessly. The leading retail enterprises will continuously apply the latest technology to enhance the whole experience of consumers, while reducing operational efficiency and reducing costs.

Three, the new retail will restructure the supply chain, such as the store as the carrier of the warehouse, and realize the combination of store and warehouse.

For example, Nestle's "real warehouse and virtual warehouse" is a typical combination of store and warehouse, which has been greatly increased through the delivery of local warehouses and stores.