Is O2O the next gold mine in the field of electrical business?

The development of the Internet also let the prospect of e-commerce become very good, in business-to-business, business, Consumer-to-consumer, everyone began to hype a new hot: O2O (Online 2 Offline).

This is the next gold mine in the field, and it is thought that O2O's model of online selection and payment of service value and access to services is becoming the newest direction in the field of E-commerce. Group Purchase As a representative of the O2O model, the success of the world to make entrepreneurs more confident confidence, have felt that O2O Online mall will eventually become Taobao, Jingdong E-commerce giant.

It looks good, doesn't it?

User queries

E-commerce era makes the choice of consumers become more wide, more convenient consumption. There is no doubt about it, but at the same time the status of consumer protection and other issues become more complex and serious. Unlike physical goods, when consumers pay for services in advance, once the quality is lower than expected or even extremely inferior, consumers are unable to "return" and can only withstand, up to the social network to complain. Most people have experienced the dilemma of "before payment is God, after payment is inferior to younger brother" in service industry, O2O is undoubtedly to increase this kind of conflict possibility. At present, group buying platform, consumers, business disputes between the power of the case is often typical cases.

Second, a big catalyst for online payments is low prices. However, when consumers receive services and find at most "value for money", they lose the meaning of online payments. And if let O2O value, to pay more price of ordinary consumers will inevitably have the heart of injustice, consumer experience naturally to greatly discount.

Mall, really good?

The author thinks, "Jing Dong mode" is not suitable for O2O. In the service industry, the concept of "differentiation" or "personalization" has been emphasized, and if the services provided by many businesses become "inventory", the direct effect is that the service homogeneity is serious, which is often equated with the cheap service. At the same time, the price of business services become more transparent, and not necessarily as they would like to: users are not fools, most will choose the most "cost-effective" projects and have a snowball effect, resulting in business profit space is severely compressed.

In addition, the service industry itself is difficult to establish a set of effective industry standards, the platform after the "strong stronger" effect on the development of the entire industry is not necessarily a good thing. For example, Taobao now "shop big bullying" phenomenon of the increasingly serious, and small and medium-sized shops are Menke Sparrow miserable.

Why does group purchase succeed?

According to the author's view, O2O future worries, then why group buying can be so successful? Indeed, group buying is a form of O2O, but its success has a unique secret:

Time.

Recall consumer behavior, agglomeration effect and price explosion point are very effective marketing means. Group buying is precisely the same time with these two elements. The "Consumer Impulse" is activated, and consumer behavior is naturally generated by the low discount price, the compelling advertising page and the rising number of participants. Once the "time limit" is lifted, the rational cell of the consumer begins to work, and the potential for consumption is relatively lower.

As a result, the popularity of group buying is not so much the triumph of the O2O model as the success of internet marketing means.

O2O navigation platform and self-built O2O

To sum up, I think in the O2O field of entrepreneurship is difficult to succeed, not to mention the next Taobao or Beijing east. But is O2O really the only group buying?

The answer is: O2O navigation platform and self-built O2O.

That is, by the merchant independent construction O2O site, provide online booking and advance payment discount, while the third party to establish O2O navigation platform, according to natural rankings and consumer Word-of-mouth to create a navigation page, and according to user traffic to the merchant charge a certain fee. At present, the most likely to evolve into this model is the public Comment Network category of evaluation sites, because the navigation system is easy to establish, but the user data is a long process of accumulation.

And O2O itself, looks very good, in fact, maybe just another bone.

(reprint please retain the source, author: Libran)