No Following The Trend, No Foreign Style? E-Commerce Offline Stores Are Growing

Physical retail is forced to open online stores by e-commerce. The e-commerce platform, however, has chosen to open stores offline. Don't you let it go under the line? It's so unreasonable, but you think physical retail is so simple. Hehe, please keep watching!

　　 No following the trend, no foreign style? E-commerce offline stores are increasingly open

A few days ago, it was reported that Alibaba would open its first physical store in Tianjin, selling a wide range of goods, including food and kitchenware. It hoped to use the huge physical market to promote the sales of imported goods and provide customers with a more personalized shopping experience. This is another move of landing store services following Alibaba's acquisition of Yintai.

It is not uncommon for pure online platforms to get involved offline. In 2015, JumeiYoupin opened a fast duty-free experience store in Qianmen Street; Amazon opens physical experience stores; Jingdong first joined hands with convenience stores, and then took a stake in Yonghui, strongly promoting "Jingdong to Home"; Dangdang opened a physical bookstore; Suning's mother baby e-commerce red children have tried to locate sites

although online retailers The giants started offline layout without exception, but so far, it seems that they have not attracted enough popularity in the industry and consumers: it is more like a sense of existence.

　　 Why do things turn out like this?

Lv Wenlong, the head of Leyou omni channel marketing, said in an interview with a reporter who molested e-commerce that e-commerce is playing with the money of capital, and as long as GMV has good growth, it can continue to raise funds; More attention is paid to profit offline, so the market pressure is great.

This means that e-commerce lacks offline retail and management experience as well as marketing methods, and lacks the means and motivation to copy the marketing routine of using online prices.

Although there is no special success of e-commerce stores, there are more and more attempts from online to offline. Why does this happen?

　 Why open a shop?

It is generally believed that the reasons for e-commerce to open physical stores can be explained as follows.

First, brand promotion. Take the Amazon physical store located in the bustling area of Manhattan as an example. It is crowded with customers. Compared with those enterprises that heavily advertise every year, it can sell goods at a price close to or even lower. It can be said that it can kill two birds with one stone.

The second is close to consumers. Go to the inventory center to solve the problem of the last mile. If there are more and more e-commerce physical stores, the Tianjin inventory center like Vipshop can distribute the goods to various stores, closer to consumers.

The third is the substantiation of e-commerce. From online to offline, from virtual to reality, it is no longer the display of goods on the shelf, but the display of goods themselves, marking the virtual e-commerce with a real brand; On the other hand, it can also prove the fake goods of e-commerce. For example, JD is often questioned about the fake goods of a certain brand of mother and baby, and the fake goods of a certain brand of Taobao brand To clarify themselves.

　　 But this does not seem to fully explain the real reason for opening e-commerce stores?

Lv Wenlong believes that, internet The growth dividend has gradually faded, and the competition between platforms has become increasingly fierce. From the development trend of Taobao and Tmall, the performance growth of e-commerce platforms is not as easy as before. On the other hand, online is a small share of retail after all, so it is reasonable for the platform to seek more offline development opportunities with its own supply chain resources.

That is, the online growth slows down, and the money burning model is difficult to sustain. In order to make up for the offline weakness of e-commerce, the pursuit of profits is the main reason for the launch of e-commerce stores.

However, whatever the reason, in the current economic environment of China, experienced physical stores are trapped due to e-commerce squeeze and transformation, and offline retail is blocked; And can pure e-commerce platforms really overcome all kinds of obstacles in the cold winter of retail, such as online development, and take pride in offline Jianghu?

Very difficult! It's not so easy to mix offline!

Tmall opened an offline store in Beijing in the early years, Love Honeycomb, and ended up with nothing; Jingdong opened a mother and baby store in Youtang, Chaowai Street, Beijing, which was also considered unsuccessful by the mother and baby industry.

Why does it fail? It has a great reputation, rich choices, and online and offline multi angle experience. At least it should live well.

Unfortunately, this is not the case.

In the same year, 7-11 became an e-commerce platform, and took the best sellers of e-commerce platforms to the offline Ito Yokado. The sales per unit area was 30% higher than that of ordinary displays. This combination of online and offline is very interesting.

　　 Why can't Chinese e-commerce do this?

In fact, the more retail is subdivided, the more attention is paid to brand. Each subdivision channel should have different brands and different impressions of consumers.

For example, JD Mothers and Babies are fighting with Taobao Mothers and Babies online and Suning Hong Children online. You are competitors, and your express delivery advantage may be competitiveness.

However, when you go to the offline store, you are next to Lijia Baby and Leyou Pregnant Baby. You are competing with them for customer flow. Your express delivery is not an advantage. JD's brand cannot be extended to the store. If it is extended, even if customers are curious to go in, they find that it is no different from other stores, but it goes faster. Customers are so strange.

To go a little further, why is it that the entrance of WeChat shopping is given to one's own people, but still can't do it? What a huge amount of traffic, but the reason why users don't go to the WeChat portal for shopping is also very simple. For them, the portal is not differentiated and the price is lower? Product update trend? None, just an ordinary entrance. There may be different categories, but there is no perception for customers!

Each entrance is a channel, and each channel should have different brand differences. To put it bluntly, it is necessary to redefine the users of this channel and attach a distinctive label to themselves.

Therefore, if this wave of consumers is not redefined, consumers can't think of the difference between offline stores and online stores, and it is difficult to really succeed.

　　 How to do it?

First, position your target audience.

The target customer group of e-commerce is part of the original offline retail stores. How should the target customer group be positioned when e-commerce opens offline stores?

On the one hand, such as the above scenario, once the target customer group attracted by the opening of the store is the original online traffic, that is, it is highly coincident with the online customer group, which has no significance for offline retail performance; On the other hand, the customer base of physical stores inevitably overlaps with that of other stores and online stores. How can we carry out sophisticated and professional marketing programs for them, so as not to cause loss of online traffic, but to attract other new customer groups to increase sales performance?

The second is to attach new labels to the commodity structure.

E-commerce relies on the Internet for existence and lacks the gene of physical retail since its birth. The virtual Internet has made e-commerce SKUs develop infinitely, but physical retail has store costs, and the pressure of market efficiency has led to the need for accurate selection of products. The differentiated choice of commodity structure can give consumers new experience. How to do it?

For example, the book store operated by Dangdang is a small product after all, and it is a good way to make a store brand monopoly like a clothing brand; But what about Alibaba and JD? How to differentiate? But how to position the offline commodity structure? What are the differences between its online product portfolio and that of e-commerce?

In addition, the difficulties of opening e-commerce stores are: how to manage the supply chain, balance the double line prices, and resolve the conflicts with brand channel providers?

Lv Wenlong believes that opening offline stores on the platform should depend on whether the entire supply chain has been optimized; The platform fee, marketing fee and logistics fee are all necessary if the goods are to be sold. The online link of removing middlemen is not the unique advantage of the online link. The offline link is also in the direct supply, shortening the supply chain.

The topic of supply chain involves another question: whether double lines are at the same price? Online e-commerce relies on low prices to attract customers. It does not need too much marketing to make a profit. If the price of offline brands is higher than online, why do consumers choose stores to consume? And if the double lines are at the same price, what about the brand direct sales counter? What about suppliers? It must be a great pressure.

Another consideration is the cost structure.

The cost structure of stores is high, especially for those with prosperous locations, such as rent, transfer fees, renovation fees, water and electricity fees, etc. Under the huge cost pressure, will the commodity cost price of e-commerce budget rise? If not, how to do marketing or transfer to eliminate cost pressure?

If e-commerce stores are only opened to simply improve the consumer experience, then this enterprise must be a conscientious enterprise. However, no matter how conscientious the enterprise is, it is impossible to improve the experience service for consumers with the idea of continuous loss.

Therefore, once e-commerce stores are opened, profit is the inevitable goal. But at present, there is still a long way to go to implement and achieve huge economic benefits. However, it is a good prospect and attempt. Next, more e-commerce stores may emerge, and we are looking forward to how they can solve the above problems.