Platform Retail Can Not Form Brand Culture: Enterprises Must Practice Their Own Data Center

Affected by the black swan incident, the growth rate of global retail consumption in 2020 will be significantly impacted. In the first 10 months of 2020, U.S. retail sales increased by 0% year-on-year; according to the data released in January 2021 by the National Bureau of statistics of China, the total retail sales of consumer goods in 2020 were 3919.1 billion yuan, a decrease of 3.9% over the previous year.

In 2020, all retail enterprises are in distress to choose; by 2021, retail enterprises will gradually clarify where their focus should be: digital transformation and refined operation. In fact, the digitalization of retail enterprises is not only the upgrading of operational efficiency, but also the promotion of the generation and flow of new retail elements (user data), so as to achieve the purpose of reshaping the user relationship, and to form the * * growth of digital business internal circulation marketing, which will bring about an exponential increase in marginal benefits.

Change and invariance of retail

We can find that for thousands of years, people have been innovating along the path of organizational change and technology application to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Every retail reform is driven by two forces. The first is the change of consumption experience, and the second is the renewal of technology. The essence of these two forces is gradual innovation around "cost, efficiency and experience".

In the 3600 year history of China's retail industry, it has concentrated the 160 year development course of western countries in the last 30 years. So far, China's retail industry has gone from retail 3.0 to retail 4.0 in the past 20 years.

Retail 3.0: online retail (Internet Era)

The rise of the Internet has reconstructed the concept of time and space, making online retail with e-commerce as the main form become a more efficient retail mode.

The retail "field" is presented in the form of web pages, extending from the limited physical space to the virtual space, which completely removes the space restrictions and enables consumers to obtain standardized product information no matter where they are; the Internet has broken the time limit, and consumers can look for product information at any time; it has reconstructed the consumption behavior, and compared with the original shopping selection, through search Keyword selection is not only faster and more convenient, but also promotes the centralized presentation of product and brand information to * *. After the purchase is completed, the consumption experience is greatly improved through the way of logistics express delivery to the door and the way of goods to find people.

From the perspective of business logic, the e-commerce platform of retail 3.0 is actually a retail mode with a higher degree of centralization and concentration than department stores, chain stores and supermarkets in the era of retail 2.0. Commodity information has never been centralized, and consumer traffic has also been concentrated unprecedentedly. The e-commerce website platform has broken the limitation of space, and online 24 hours a day With the limitation of time, the efficiency is higher and the cost is lower.

For a long time now and in the future, they will be the retailers in the retail industry. They will continue to take the online retail platform as the center and actively construct the retail ecology including payment, data, finance, logistics and other links, which has a profound impact on the commercial society. In the retail 4.0 era, they are still the dominant ones.

Retail 4.0: new retail (Internet of things era)

With the popularity of mobile terminals such as smart phones, the full coverage of wireless networks, and the rise and application of digital products, consumers' shopping is no longer limited by time and space, which opens a new pattern of online and offline integration of virtual and real in retail industry. Traditional retailers have gone through digital transformation, and have gone online, while Amazon, Alibaba and other Internet enterprises have also rapidly deployed offline through various ways. The new retail we see is that in the era of Internet of things, big data, cloud computing, Internet of things, artificial intelligence and other technologies are used to make goods and services more match the effective consumption demand, so that consumers can "want what they want and want it right away". We are now in the early stage of new retailing. This is an era of vigorous technological development. Every link that must be passed through in the trade and consumption of commodities may be innovated, and it contains the possibility of being reformed.

We can see that the changes of commercial civilization in the past thousands of years have promoted the reform and innovation of retail industry step by step, or use technological revolution or business model innovation to find and meet the needs of consumers more efficiently and accurately. At the same time, each new model brings a number of new opportunities for wealth creation. With a number of innovative platforms and ecology, a number of enterprise giants are produced. It used to be, it is now, and it will be in the future.

No matter how the "goods" become numerous and diverse, and how the "fields" become innovative, there is a basic logic that remains unchanged: the efficiency and experience of users' needs. China has entered the era of the rise of consumers, and all technology and empowerment are ultimately done around users.

New competition pattern of retail: new retail can't do without user data (small data)

With the rapid development of the Internet, new concepts such as big data, cloud computing, mobile Internet, artificial intelligence, wearable devices, robots, virtual reality, Internet of things, interest map, social system and other new concepts appear in various media, seminars or exhibitions. Every day of the Internet era, it seems that a new scientific and technological innovation is born. Science and technology, like a group of wild horses out of control, gallops in the forest of reinforced concrete. It is fierce and difficult to distinguish the direction, affecting everyone.

Mobile Internet is a new era. Internet liberates space and mobile Internet liberates time. Compared with the Internet age, the difference of mobile Internet is that there is no online or offline distinction, and every consumer is always online behind the mobile intelligent terminal. In the era of users always online, all users' behaviors can be digitized, and then digital and intelligent. Take user data as the starting point, pay attention to their own brand, market and users, guide product change and precision marketing according to the results of data analysis, so that the decision-making can be based on and the results can be predicted.

Back to business operation, there must be three things: users, products and marketing. In the past, many enterprises thought that products were the first place, and that high-quality products were absolutely necessary to buy; after failure, they began to think that marketing was the first priority, and then they chose to launch numerous advertisements, and then found that they did not know where the users were at all! In fact, products, marketing and users are enterprises, which must be built into a closed loop in order to be effective.

It is the first trigonometric cycle at the beginning of enterprise operation that the product plus content (i.e. commodity) is used for marketing promotion to reach the target customers. During this period, the precipitated user data will be analyzed to guide the next product iteration optimization, and the second cycle will be opened. When the cycle continues to the 50th or 100th cycle, enterprises can confidently say "I have a very good relationship with users", which is the meaning of "user data driven".

Precipitation of user data, analysis of user data, we will find that data better understand the current needs of users than we, through data continue to mine users' future needs, applied in the continuous change of products, and finally reach with precision marketing, we can firmly grasp users and realize commercial value.

Looking back to 2020, many retail enterprises find that the original channels have been hit hard, accompanied by continuous loss of customers. Is it useless for enterprises to operate triangle circulation? After reflection, we found that: who can be closer to users, who can own users, who can have better ability to fight and fight in the market competition.

China's Internet has entered the "second half" ahead of time, and the cost of online and offline users has increased sharply year by year, which makes it difficult for traffic thinking to continue. For China's retail enterprises, at the moment when the dividend of Internet traffic is peaking, user growth is a difficult problem that must be solved by products and marketing. So, in the face of the problem of user growth, what can we do to enable enterprises to realize the flywheel effect through triangular circulation? Using 5cm methodology of small data strategy to realize user increment is the experience of many enterprises.

Through small data strategy, enterprises can return products and marketing to user data as the core, start from user demand, and operate users with delicacy, so as to realize the sustainable triangle circulation of enterprise operation. To achieve the scientific management of enterprises by data driven business; to reconstruct the relationship with data to achieve scientific user management; who can win users, who can really make the business triangle cycle.

Retail opportunities and challenges: Retail 5.0 self retail Era

In the era of mobile Internet, if a group of users with common interests, cognition and values form a group, they interact, communicate, cooperate and infect with each other, and produce a value relationship that feeds back on the product brand itself. The self running and self circulating economic form formed by the mutual action of emotional trust and value feedback between products and user groups is social economy 。

Community economy is inseparable from community, and community is actually based on sharing economy. In the mobile Internet world, users share their own living state, interests, hobbies, etc., and establish emotions or trust with others in daily contact, forming a human network. Gradually, the interaction between people is not only limited to information interaction, but also contains the value interaction of products, services, experience and other contents, so as to realize the matching of supply and demand in sharing.

Small data strategy 5cm methodology is a mature methodology for user research, and has successful experience in the implementation of enterprise business model innovation, which will help enterprises enjoy the next wave of social economy dividends. In recent years, we have seen more and more enterprises practice small data strategy.

Retail enterprises must first understand and study users and provide products and services according to their needs. At the same time, enterprises provide not only products and services, but also the customer value generated from them. If you want to know what value the established community can provide to users, remember: don't be arrogant. Only by exploring the real needs of users and planning and designing, can the operation of the community be successful. As each user's life experience, education level, work nature, family structure and personal aesthetic taste are different, and the emphasis of each user on the quality requirements of product and service is also very different. Therefore, to understand the user needs, we must start with a clear user portrait.

Now is a self retailing era in which "everyone can sell, everything can be sold". Different forces, including platforms, big C, small C, small B and ordinary consumers, are promoting the continuous development and expansion of social economy. This is a new business era, a real people-oriented business era.

Once it has self retailing, the function of "field" will be gradually replaced. The relationship between enterprises and users is unprecedented close and harmonious. Enterprises are open to their core users, and self retailers will actively participate in all aspects of enterprise operation and management. All users' consumption and experience of products can be managed and mastered by enterprises in real time They become brand display or disappear completely.

Traditional e-commerce retailing is often regarded as a supplement to the offline channels of enterprises. To a certain extent, the relationship between brands and customers is shortened through Internet tools. However, this relationship still depends on e-commerce platform. Self retailing is the complete reconstruction of user relationship. For the first time, enterprises have close contact with and face their own and real users, and self retail in terms of products, promotion, and customer service Quality changes have taken place in the four aspects of price and channel.

Only by self retailing can we grasp the user relationship, or reconstruct the user relationship, can we really do self retailing well. The general order of self retail users is acquaintance first, then semi familiar, and finally strangers. They are very dependent on the social network tools of the circle of friends. Due to the restriction of acquaintance relationship, they pay special attention to word-of-mouth and product quality.

In the user relationship constructed by self retailing, all the relationships can be mastered by the enterprise itself in real time, from unfamiliar to familiar, from trading to dependence. These fans, members, users and super users who are far or near the brand, their thoughts and actions, and their likes, forwarding and comments on social networking sites will be real-time through the user data management system Feedback to the decision maker's desk.

For which users use what kind of marketing strategy is the most effective, which users can really create value through products or services, can be clearly seen in the data background. The user relationship of self retailing is not only sales relationship and sales relationship, but also has trust, expectation, emotion and more profound interactive content.

Since retail adheres to the user centered business thinking and does the basic work of user relationship, it needs to start from the precipitation and collection of user data step by step. There is no shortcut to follow, such as user portrait, user classification, demand mining, word-of-mouth marketing, etc.

With the power of social and mobile Internet, consumers begin to connect faster, more and more closely. The scale and speed of connectivity is unprecedented, and its impact exceeds any of our imagination. Global retail industry, whether developed market or emerging regional market, is in the storm and tsunami of mobile Internet and social media. We are ushering in an era of great changes.

Retailers, brand merchants and dealers are facing the situation of significant economic slowdown, overcapacity, serious squeeze on the space of * * and deepening globalization. For the country, the level of retail development is the embodiment of domestic demand, which is closely related to the promotion of economic growth; for the people, the development of retail reflects the quality of life, which is closely related to everyone's daily life.

Looking forward to the future, some enterprises have already possessed the technological innovation and accumulation of new retailing. It is very likely that they will, for the first time, initiate a new retail mode and ecology in the developed market, and take the lead in entering a new era of retail.

In terms of reconstructing user relationship, small data strategy advocates enterprises to return to user thinking, precipitate super users through fine management, pay attention to fine operation of old customers, find super users of enterprises, and establish real connection with them to form real-time interaction. When super users share brand products with their relatives and friends through the social chain, they can complete the advanced self retailing.

With the old users to bring new users, looking for the increment in the stock, persevere, the user funnel extends backward. With the time span, for enterprises, the marketing cost will be close to 0, and the performance will be explosive growth, which is the goal of small data strategy in 5cm self retailing.

reflection:

Platform based operation has no brand survival space, just like a snowball. More appropriately, like a squirrel in a cage, there will never be a head. Brand enterprises should take their own personalized development road, and must establish their own data center and service system in the future.