Why is it that e-commerce kills entities in China? Because the service is poor and the price is high. How to break the cold winter in the retail industry? Lower prices and improve service.
Recently, a list of global physical store casualties has been widely circulated in the circle of friends. The retail industry is in depression and department stores are closing. Under the multiple influences of e-commerce, rents, and changes in consumer habits, physical stores have disappeared in large numbers.
Entrepreneurs who have opened physical stores in China complained that when some consumers buy computers and cameras, they first go to the store to take a look, then use their mobile phones to place orders after leaving the house, and buy cheaper products from e-commerce. goods, physical stores have become e-commerce experience centers.
Let’s take a look at the current situation:
Japan: Mainly based on entities, e-commerce is not very developed.
China: E-commerce has a great impact on entities, and there is a trend of substitution in many fields. For example, Computer City has been completely replaced.
United States: E-commerce and brick-and-mortar businesses coexist, most successful brick-and-mortar businesses still exist, and e-commerce is also developing well.
The most similar country to Japan is Hong Kong, which has basically no e-commerce.
China initially lagged behind Japan in terms of retail concepts and technology, but now Japan itself admits that Japan is five years behind China in terms of e-commerce. Students have surpassed teachers, and Chinese Internet companies headed by Tao Jingpin have played an important role here.
Since Japanese people are not keen on online shopping, where do they go to buy things?
They went to three places: the first was a supermarket, the second was a department store, and the third was a shopping street. In short, most of them go to physical stores.
Then why don’t we go to a physical store to buy it?
Any business is inseparable from a core question: why consumers buy.
chooses the purchasing channel for three reasons: price and service.
In fact, in different countries or regions, by comparing these two points, you can generally understand why e-commerce vs. offline commerce is such a form.
The first thing is price.
Let’s first analyze why China’s e-commerce is so developed.
2005-2015 was the era of China’s “e-commerce explosion”. In this era, the Chinese market had an extremely developed manufacturing industry and was prone to excess. The prices of many products at the production end were incredibly low. However, retail channels are in the early stages of development, with high costs, high markups, low efficiency, and poor services. Offline stores increase prices by 8 times, and clothing priced at RMB 700 or RMB 800 is increased by 2-3 times on Taobao. You can easily buy it for RMB 300 or RMB 200.
However, in the United States or Japan, too many products need to be imported and there are no domestic manufacturers. Therefore, it is not easy for e-commerce merchants to form a price advantage.
In China, many manufacturers achieve this through factory direct sales or methods similar to factory direct sales, such as hiring an e-commerce agent to operate. Naturally, it directly bypasses the offline business with high markup rate of and low efficiency of . The high scale and high penetration rate of and of
e-commerce have also reduced China's logistics costs to a very cheap level.
In the past, a courier would deliver one truck to an area, then one truck would deliver to a community, and then one truck would only deliver to one building. As the order volume increased, efficiency continued to improve.
Although logistics costs have increased rapidly in recent years, the delivery cost of each order by express delivery companies has continued to decrease. Because logistics costs account for a low proportion of the price of goods, Chinese e-commerce sellers hardly need to consider logistics costs.
Looking back at the Japanese retail industry, after years of development, there are very few intermediate links. The efficiency of offline retail is very high, and the price is the same online and offline. When shopping in physical stores, you have to pay 10% consumption tax, and when you shop online, you also need to pay 10% consumption tax. Without a price advantage, it is difficult to beat physical stores.
The second is service.
Young friends may not be impressed by state-owned shopping malls.
In the 1980s, there were almost only state-owned shopping malls, and the service quality of the salespeople in the shopping malls was really poor.
At that time, it was normal for many salespeople to look at people with their noses and answer them indifferently. I’ll always say something to you: Don’t touch it if you don’t want to buy it! Whether you want to buy it or not, it’s best if you don’t buy it. It saves people trouble. Anyway, they get the same salary and it’s still an iron rice bowl.
Later, all state-owned shopping malls were destroyed. It seems that he deserves it.
Then, with the marketization, the sales industry began to change from service to after-sales. This change was forced out by market competition.
In 2000, many businesses and customers quarreled or even fought. After the quarrel, several people had to review the situation for a long time. Ryoko has met many people. Therefore, several people should go together to buy things later to prevent disputes.
regulates the herding of sheep, and bad money chases good money in physical stores. Therefore, black shops engage in forced buying and selling, junk goods at sky-high prices, and secretly exchange customers' high-quality products, such as bulk milk powder, dichlorvos sausage, sulfur bean curd sticks, poisonous rice, gutter oil , athlete's foot sauerkraut, and become popular, and the demons dance wildly. The
315 conference is held every year, and shocking news comes every year. Simply put,
is competition, unlimited competition, and then reaching an optimal service standard. Those with bad service will all die.
But the problem is that in capitalist society , physical sales have always been done this way. After hundreds of years of competition, the competition has created a service system that makes consumers very happy. We don't have
. Our physical sales have been market-oriented for less than 20 years. We are also competing in the process, but the competition has not yet produced results. Then, e-commerce came. Before physical sales have evolved, they have been hit by e-commerce’s dimensionality reduction. Then, it was over.
Some people say that if the waiters are so enthusiastic, the guests will find it annoying. Having a good service attitude really does not mean being groveling, running around, and asking for help. Excellent service lies in being able to see the real needs of customers, rather than mindlessly recommending the most expensive ones. If customers don't want to buy it, they will be left alone. It’s not like I recommend a lot before and after the tour. Customers say they just want to take a look, but they still recommend endlessly. Even if you can't observe words and expressions or make careful observations, at least you can't judge people by their appearance. If you are well-dressed, you will be enthusiastic, if you are dressed plainly, you will be cold-shouldered. Treating guests equally is the most basic service attitude.
Speaking of housing prices, are housing prices low in Japan? In fact, it is not the physical stores that have killed e-commerce in Japan, but the physical stores that have been able to survive the impact of e-commerce and rely on high-quality service standards for a relatively long time, and they are still doing so.
As for convenience, saving time and effort, obtaining more purchase information, entertainment and social consumption, these are also within the scope of services, so I won’t go into details.
summarize.
When shopping in physical stores, there are few items and shopping is tiring; carrying heavy items is expensive.
Online shopping, price comparison online, no one is fooling you, just return or exchange if you are not satisfied.
If shopping in a physical store is basically the same as online, I am still willing to go to the physical store. For example, the supermarket that everyone often visits.
Therefore, we cannot simply say that e-commerce will kill physical stores. In fact, integrity defeats dishonesty, and good service defeats bad service.
