In the past two or three years, the retail industry experienced an unprecedented brainstorm, Jingdong, Alibaba, Suning cloud business has stood in their own position to redefine retail.Jing Dong Group Chairman and CEO Liu Qiangdong stressed that the first The essence of the fourth retail revolution is unbounded retail, the ultimate goal is to reconstruct the cost, efficiency, experience of retail based on knowing, receiving goods and knowing the market. "Ma Yun, chairman of Alibaba Group Board of Directors, believes that pure electricity supplier era Coming soon, the new retail will lead the new business model. "Sun Jining Chairman Zhang Jindong pointed out that in the smart retail era, the boundary between online and offline will become increasingly blurred and competition will return to the nature of retail. Experience an unprecedented change, it will bring the appliance industry what kind of opportunities? Appliance companies, channel companies, and how to deal with?
Unbounded retail industry trends
After several years of rapid growth, the growth rate of household electrical appliance products online has tended to slow down. "The 2015 China Household Electrical Appliances Online Purchasing Analysis Report" shows that in 2015, the overall growth rate of four major household appliances (45%) was less than 72% of the previous year, The overall growth of small appliances (50%) is less than 78% of the previous year. "2016 China Home Appliances Online Shopping Analysis Report" shows that in 2016, the online market of pure domestic appliances and electronic products increased by 35.3%.
Household appliances online shopping market can not be unlimited growth, growth to a certain extent, there will be some bottlenecks, e-commerce platform needs to find new growth point.Ke Zhong Yi Kang, general manager of Black Electric Division, pointed out that the Chinese channels to today, From the original department store channels to specialized retail outlets (such as Suning, Gome), to online markets, the bottleneck of online channels appears to have emerged.
So where are the next growth points for these e-commerce platforms? Channel sinking, online and offline channel convergence, because online and offline channels each have their own advantages and complement each other. The advantages of online channels are sound data , From the user into the page, to the browsing path, and then to the transaction, the delivery of goods, the user's evaluation, these data online channels are mastered.Online channel is the weakest experience, but this is the advantage of offline channels, especially Appliance products, users pay more attention to the offline experience, which is why the previous home appliances can be formed under the channel Suning GOME one of the very important reasons.If the e-commerce platform can be extended to the offline market offline, not only can make up for the experience Insufficient, you can also get new growth points.
So in the past two or three years, there has been a continuous discussion on the retail revolution, ranging from smart retail sales from Suning to new retail outlets in Alibaba to unbounded retail outlets in Jingdong, all with a view to exploring new trends in the retail industry. Fang Zhao, president believes that online channels can not be separated from offline support and services, the line can not be separated from the online high-efficiency, intelligent information delivery, online and offline integration is an inevitable trend .As offline Suning channel to the line extension, and as the e-commerce platform Ali, Jingdong extends to the line, they go their separate ways, both hope that online and offline channels can be integrated to promote the retail upgrade.
Pang Hin-tung believes that the nature of the new retail and unbounded retail business is the same, that is, enhancing the user experience and opening up the behavior data of online and offline users. For the home appliance products, the trend of unbounded retail sales will be more obvious than that of other products. Because people have experience of home appliances or home improvement effect has higher requirements.
In fact, the unbounded retail is not just the integration of online and offline channels, in fact, it created a new retail scene.Guangdong Oriental Network (Beijing) Co., Ltd. Liu Qiang, general manager of e-commerce business department pointed out that the essence of unbounded retail should be All retail channels are everywhere, through different sales scenarios to build the consumer to stimulate the desire to buy may sell electric rice cookers in the area is not in the appliance area, but in the rice area, the place to sell color TV to the big screen in front of the bar. How to build different scenarios to stimulate consumer desire to buy and realize the order payment, this is the core.A appliance business leader believes that in the era of unbounded retail IT system is not just a tool for IT systems Not only can improve business efficiency, but also can extend to customer-side experience and interaction.In the premise of big data, retail IT system is a concentrated expression of business model and business ideas.Therefore, IT and big data are the era of unbounded retail business Foundation and core.
Unbounded retail good appliance brand and channel
Unbounded retail is good for both retailers and home appliance brands.
For home appliance brands, in addition to cooperation with the channel, its own channels are also strengthened, the right to speak may also continue to expand.Peng Xian Dong pointed out that the traditional household electrical appliance brands need to layer by layer, circulation is very long, but the unbounded retail allows users and Product circulation between the shorter and shorter, to get more feedback, to provide better services, business and user exchanges will be more frequent, data will be more and more, enterprises will be more understanding of the needs of users , So that enterprises can make more products that meet the needs of users.Visual products will be replaced by personalized products.So the greatest opportunity for home appliance enterprises is to provide personalized service because they can master a large number of user data.At the same time, Skyworth Cheng Wanjun, director of RGB e-commerce, pointed out that in the process of increasing market share of Jingdong and Lynx, the traditional appliance manufacturers may gain market share if they keep pace.
From retailers, the pursuit of different platforms is different.For most retailers, the unbounded retail sales can expand their scale, as Jingdong had been limited to the online market, the future through the development of offline channels, online Combined with the line, you can reduce costs, increase profits, to provide users with more accurate services.Peng Hsien Tung, Ali is a bit different, it hopes to include all the Chinese people's life habits into its trajectory, it is the next big Chess game.
Unbounded retail is expected to reshape the channel pattern
Unbounded retail looks good, but poses different challenges for e-commerce platforms, appliance manufacturers and specialty retailers.
For Suning, Gome, the current retail stores are mainly concentrated in the first and second tier cities, third and fourth tier cities were entrenched in local retail stores, before they tried to expand to third and fourth tier cities, but eventually proved costly, not feasible. In recent years, they have turned to third- and fourth-tier cities through acquisitions, for example, Gome acquired Jiangxi Tengda Electric Appliance Co., Ltd. However, these acquisitions are mainly concentrated in capital cities and prefecture-level cities and remain vacant in rural and peripheral cities. , Suning and the United States if you want to expand to third and fourth tier cities, you can consider expanding the category, from a single home appliance retail store to increase non-home appliances, which is conducive to business and efficiency.
In addition to the expansion of offline channels, Suning and the United States in recent years online expansion, the establishment of the Suning Tesco and Gome online, their existing offline channels to form a certain supplement.But Suning and Gome users and online Channel user groups and the conflict in recent years, Jingdong and Ali have seized some of Suning and Gome original users.Peng Xian Dong pointed out that Suning, the United States if you want to further make up for the online market deficiencies, and online partners can work together , Because the latter has traffic advantages, for example, Suning Tesco and Lynx cooperation, cooperation Jingdong and WeChat, are more typical cases.
Third and fourth tier cities, towns and villages are Suning, Gome's weakness, Ali through the village Amoy, Jingdong through Jingdong help, Jingdong store, aiming precisely this one market.But the offline market and online market appeal point, to promote Process and online market is different, the regional differences is very large.Jingdong cloud vice president Liu Zhahao pointed out that after the experience of life in the state-level poverty-stricken villages found that the situation of rural e-commerce and second-tier cities are greatly different market, their interaction hub is a small sale shop .Peng Xian Dong believes that offline channel management, store settings, consumer behavior and habits, online and offline channel combination is the biggest challenge e-commerce.
In fact, the Internet appliance brands and e-commerce channels a bit similar, before their user groups are mainly concentrated in the first and second tier cities, online markets have emerged growth bottlenecks, had to open the offline market.If complementarity, the Internet brand can Into the Suning, Gome, but the Internet brand profit is too low, and these channel costs are too high, so they can only build their own offline channels, such as music and millet are self-built offline channels to make up for offline channels Which millet directly from the first and second tier cities into the Millet House in the past year, the effect is significant.A few people pointed out that the success of the Millet House, one of the reasons is to enrich the store's product category, part of the cost of amortization, Increase the user's viscosity, but also the impact of brand effects.
But whether it is Ali, Jingdong, or online appliance brands, they will increase operating costs from online to offline development, for example, store rentals, utilities, the need to increase input costs, and eventually may spread to the price of goods In. Wanjun said that the e-commerce stores under the line or the Internet appliance brand stores under the line of cooperation have a certain profit demand, the original e-commerce channel appliance operation costs may be about 6% of retail sales, but the franchise profit demand may Of course, the diversified products can be partially diluted costs, but the more the product, the larger the display area, the larger the display area, Need to increase the area of the store, in fact, will increase costs.
Traditional appliance brands and Internet brands, e-commerce channels, specialty retail stores are different, they may have more advantages in unbounded retail. Traditional appliance brands in all parts of the country have channels, up to first-tier cities, down to urban areas, rural areas. , The traditional home appliances channels are relatively fragmented, the channels are single lines of independent operations, but in the era of unbounded retail stores, the main function may be to experience the products and exchanges with users, many users may buy online behavior, so the traditional home appliances business to Said that the most important thing is the need to improve business processes, information systems from the group level.Traditional appliance brands and e-commerce channels on the contrary, e-commerce channels need to extend the antennae, each antenna need to be combined with the local, and traditional appliance brands already have Tentacles, they need to strengthen the central nervous system.
Gfk analyst Qi Wei believes that now traditional appliance manufacturers to do differentiated products online and offline, online appliance brands online and offline the same price with the product, which is a process of mutual game OPPO, vivo focus on doing offline, Because they know that online market is not the point if they can not guarantee the interests of agents in the online market.Huawei opens up another way of using sub-brands, but now it also sinks in the channel and opens stores.
Cheng Wanjun pointed out that the entire market is a complete ecology, there will be competition in this ecosystem, for example, the county-level market may also be Jingdong stores, traditional retail stores and Gome, Suning retail stores and other multi-format coexistence situation.Of course, In the process of mutual competition, there will be shuffling and elimination, but who will not be able to determine the final phase out.In the long run, the future competitiveness of the channel mainly comes from two elements - 'low cost' and ' High efficiency '. During the process of sinking channels, the status of Jingdong and Tmall will be weakened, which may be a new process of balanced establishment within the next three years.