Three years after the outbreak of the epidemic, many domestic retail companies said they could not stand it anymore. The bitterness behind this is that the traffic of physical stores has dropped sharply and the backlog of commodity inventory is serious; companies that boast about new consumer formats are facing weak growth, halving of stock prices in the secondary market, and evaporating market value. Community group buying . Live streaming sales have gradually become normalized after 2021 reshuffle.
So in this context, how should retail companies reduce costs and increase efficiency?
01
Domestic business evolution history rules
In fact, from the perspective of domestic business evolution history, it actually follows this rule. Wherever users' attention is, traffic is where business is, where the qualitative change is triggered by quantitative change, and the final business model is also where.
For example, many wholesale markets have emerged in China with reform and opening up. The two well-known wholesale markets at that time were: Yiwu Small Commodity Wholesale Market and Shandong Linyi Big Market. Of course, some provinces with location advantages also have wholesale markets of different sizes. For example, Zhengzhou Bairong Wholesale Market. The reason why
China entered the era of large-scale wholesale is that after the reform and opening up, users' attention has gone from the era of "unified purchase and sales" in the planned economy period to the era of market economy and . At that time, consumers wanted to buy more products.
In the 1980s and 1990s, many companies did not build a distributor network system from factories to consumers. Therefore, the business model of the wholesale market naturally became a relatively good business model at that time.
In 1998, with the launch of Walmart in Shenzhen's first large supermarket, this one-stop, open-shelf retail format also appeared in front of consumers. Since then, large supermarkets across the country have experienced a blowout growth.
We say that while reform and opening up drives people's income to increase, it also makes people's lives and work become increasingly busy. Since then, people's attention has been how to buy the goods they need at one time in a limited time, that is, from the previous decentralized shopping to centralized shopping.
20 urged by the epidemic, domestic live streaming sales quickly entered the public's vision. The root cause is that the epidemic directly or indirectly affects consumer income. At this time, consumers are increasingly sensitive to the price of goods. Before the live broadcast room of Oriental Selection became popular, the essence of live streaming goods was low prices, which coincides with consumers' attention.
Therefore, for enterprises, we can only avoid being eliminated by the market by observing and paying attention to changes in consumer attention in advance, as well as what business model will be generated by this attention, whether this business model is suitable for the development of our own company, and laying out in advance to seize the initiative and finding competitive advantages in the ever-changing market.
For example, the number of households in China is currently 125 million, accounting for 25% of the total households in China. If we take into account the trend of domestic aging, the population mobility caused by regional structural imbalances in economic development, the spread of infertility ideas among the younger generation, etc., it will inevitably bring about new business models and new demands.
02
Innovation in marketing methods
Why did companies feel that marketing is becoming more and more difficult to do, and even fall into homogeneous marketing? For example, beverages must be sugar-free, skin care must be ingredients, beauty must be good-branded, and clothing must be light of domestic products.
Because in essence, many companies have not really understood the real needs of users, finds the intersection between brand characteristics, user needs, and market size, and innovates in products and marketing methods.
On this issue, some of the practices of Babycare may be worthy of reference by enterprises. At present, the domestic maternal and infant industry has two typical characteristics. On the one hand, from the perspective of competitive landscape, the current domestic maternal and infant industry has typical traditional brand aging, track dispersed, and low brand concentration.
On the other hand, from the consumer side, due to the previous Sanlu milk powder incident, consumers' core demand for maternal and infant products is still safe. On this basis, Babycare launched an innovative waist stool product in 2017. This product adopts an engineering design, which not only ensures the safety of infants and young children, but also greatly reduces the physical burden of parents when raising children. Once launched, it achieved good sales.
Currently, the post-90s and post-00s in China have gradually become parents, and they have gradually realized their own awakening in the way of raising children. For example, they want to abandon the traditional disadvantages of the older generation in raising children and advocate scientific raising children. While raising children, you can also take into account your own pursuit of beauty. It is precisely this change that has led Babycare to propose a brand new slogan "redesign for love", establishing a brand mind that complements emotions + functions, and in conjunction with the promotion of the entire network media, gradually completing the upgrade of consumers' minds.
03
traffic difficulties?
The traffic trap is a realistic problem facing every merchant at present. But we think about one question in turn: Why does the Internet traffic dividend disappear? We say that whether it is a short video live broadcast platform like , Douyin , Kuaishou, or an e-commerce platform like Pinduoduo, Taobao, , JD , or a grass planting platform represented by Xiaohongshu, it will indeed give pioneers certain benefits in the early stages of a platform development.
Due to the imperfect platform mechanism, there will inevitably be loopholes in this process. As the number of merchants settled in increases and the platform mechanism is improved, the original traffic depression will be quickly filled, so there will naturally be less arbitrage space.
At this time, we will clearly feel that the promotion cost is increasing and the order quantity has not increased significantly. So we must understand a realistic problem: traffic dividends will not appear in the future, and what enterprises need to do is how to transform.
The current industry-recognized practice is to transform the public domain traffic brought by the live broadcast room into private domain traffic. Simply put, from doing one order for users to doing a lifetime of business. For example, in the past few years, many companies have always wanted to focus on the sinking market. There is no doubt that with the rise of consumption power in the sinking market in recent years, this approach is also in line with the reality.
and converting to private domain through public domain is a good way to enter the sinking market, because the sinking market is a typical acquaintance society . As the famous scholar Fei Xiaotong described this: "Under the local restrictions, the rural society has become a society that was born and died here... This is a familiar society, a society without strangers." In this society, everyone has their own "small circle".
What is triggered by the acquaintance society is the acquaintance economy, and they prefer the brands introduced by acquaintances. Therefore, for enterprises, if dozens of users in the sinking market can be operated, and these dozens of users will spread to more users, which can quickly increase product sales and save the company's promotion costs.
In fact, this process has returned to the essence of the Internet. It is enough for those who like you to like you. There is no need for companies to consider attracting new traffic all the time, but to allow existing users to form loyalty to the brand and stickiness to users through multiple sources. Therefore, the focus of enterprises at present should be to focus on building their own private domain traffic.
Here we must emphasize a problem. Whether it is the private domain traffic or the digital transformation that has been repeatedly emphasized in society in recent years, it requires that enterprises must persist for a long time. is actually a relatively long process because of the whole process.
Image source network ▲
However, in the past many years, with the rapid development of the domestic economy, many industries have generally had anxiety, and they want to invest in something and can see the effect immediately. Therefore, enterprises must lower their expectations and improve infrastructure capabilities bit by bit on the premise of clarifying the general direction, because this process cannot be bypassed.
Domestic economic development has entered the second half, saying goodbye to the previous era of wild growth. However, the general direction of relying on consumption to drive economic growth will not change in the future. What retail companies must do is to refine operations and management in in order to achieve the goal of reducing costs and increasing efficiency. transformation is difficult and tiring, but companies that have completed the transformation will inevitably be reborn from the ashes!
-end-
On the other hand, from the consumer side, due to the previous Sanlu milk powder incident, consumers' core demand for maternal and infant products is still safe. On this basis, Babycare launched an innovative waist stool product in 2017. This product adopts an engineering design, which not only ensures the safety of infants and young children, but also greatly reduces the physical burden of parents when raising children. Once launched, it achieved good sales.
Currently, the post-90s and post-00s in China have gradually become parents, and they have gradually realized their own awakening in the way of raising children. For example, they want to abandon the traditional disadvantages of the older generation in raising children and advocate scientific raising children. While raising children, you can also take into account your own pursuit of beauty. It is precisely this change that has led Babycare to propose a brand new slogan "redesign for love", establishing a brand mind that complements emotions + functions, and in conjunction with the promotion of the entire network media, gradually completing the upgrade of consumers' minds.
03
traffic difficulties?
The traffic trap is a realistic problem facing every merchant at present. But we think about one question in turn: Why does the Internet traffic dividend disappear? We say that whether it is a short video live broadcast platform like , Douyin , Kuaishou, or an e-commerce platform like Pinduoduo, Taobao, , JD , or a grass planting platform represented by Xiaohongshu, it will indeed give pioneers certain benefits in the early stages of a platform development.
Due to the imperfect platform mechanism, there will inevitably be loopholes in this process. As the number of merchants settled in increases and the platform mechanism is improved, the original traffic depression will be quickly filled, so there will naturally be less arbitrage space.
At this time, we will clearly feel that the promotion cost is increasing and the order quantity has not increased significantly. So we must understand a realistic problem: traffic dividends will not appear in the future, and what enterprises need to do is how to transform.
The current industry-recognized practice is to transform the public domain traffic brought by the live broadcast room into private domain traffic. Simply put, from doing one order for users to doing a lifetime of business. For example, in the past few years, many companies have always wanted to focus on the sinking market. There is no doubt that with the rise of consumption power in the sinking market in recent years, this approach is also in line with the reality.
and converting to private domain through public domain is a good way to enter the sinking market, because the sinking market is a typical acquaintance society . As the famous scholar Fei Xiaotong described this: "Under the local restrictions, the rural society has become a society that was born and died here... This is a familiar society, a society without strangers." In this society, everyone has their own "small circle".
What is triggered by the acquaintance society is the acquaintance economy, and they prefer the brands introduced by acquaintances. Therefore, for enterprises, if dozens of users in the sinking market can be operated, and these dozens of users will spread to more users, which can quickly increase product sales and save the company's promotion costs.
In fact, this process has returned to the essence of the Internet. It is enough for those who like you to like you. There is no need for companies to consider attracting new traffic all the time, but to allow existing users to form loyalty to the brand and stickiness to users through multiple sources. Therefore, the focus of enterprises at present should be to focus on building their own private domain traffic.
Here we must emphasize a problem. Whether it is the private domain traffic or the digital transformation that has been repeatedly emphasized in society in recent years, it requires that enterprises must persist for a long time. is actually a relatively long process because of the whole process.
Image source network ▲
However, in the past many years, with the rapid development of the domestic economy, many industries have generally had anxiety, and they want to invest in something and can see the effect immediately. Therefore, enterprises must lower their expectations and improve infrastructure capabilities bit by bit on the premise of clarifying the general direction, because this process cannot be bypassed.
Domestic economic development has entered the second half, saying goodbye to the previous era of wild growth. However, the general direction of relying on consumption to drive economic growth will not change in the future. What retail companies must do is to refine operations and management in in order to achieve the goal of reducing costs and increasing efficiency. transformation is difficult and tiring, but companies that have completed the transformation will inevitably be reborn from the ashes!
-end-
