The role of category management in e-commerce

Category management in the traditional industry is not new, but in the field of E-commerce is rarely seen;

In fact, the role of category management for E-commerce is very large, if the sales system is the basis for E-commerce, then category management can be said to be an important means of e-commerce profitability.

What does category management do?

In terms of noun interpretation, category management is divided into different categories of goods, and each type of commodity as a business strategy of the basic activities of the Unit to manage a series of related activities.

It just sounds like it's not going to feel that much. So let's look at the offline example:

We can often feel these phenomena:

1, not to the festival, the supermarket is always in the obvious position of sales and holiday-related goods;
2, in some cases, we go to the supermarket is obviously want every a, but to the end, do not know what is the reason but bought b,c,d.
3, we found in the supermarket we want to buy the * * No, but can find * * replace him.
4, we can often find some goods bundled sales, and two are useful to themselves, so they bought.

In fact, category management is to analyze the consumer's shopping preferences and shopping behavior, while analyzing the relevance and substitution of goods, to develop a product display, pricing, promotion, management and other behavior of a management method.

What is the role of category management in e-commerce?

Some people will say: ' I do not have a work class management, but also survived '; indeed, there is no need for e-commerce other than the sales system, but other systems can make e-commerce more profitable. As a matter of fact, category management is a connector between the related sales system and the logistics system.

First of all, the consumer shopping habits and preferences of the study, combined with the site itself, you can decide which classification focus development, which classification for the additional classification, which to a certain extent, will help the site to better sales. As for the activities and recommendations of the sale of help, do not have to tell too much.

Second, the research in a taxonomy will determine which products to focus on, which products to supplement, and which to give up. E-Commerce list page, though not as realistic as the shelves, there is a space limit, but the number of pages behind, more and more small, how to put the user most needed goods at the front, it became a problem related to sales efficiency, this point, e-commerce even more than traditional business needs category management, At least the quantity of the goods on the supermarket shelves has an effect on sales, and the order has little effect.

Third, the Commodity Association for the Promotion of customer unit prices played a crucial role, and even the main means to upgrade the customer unit price. This is also different from the traditional supermarket, because in supermarkets, there are at least a salesperson and other service personnel exist, and many people have a clear purpose to find things, and in E-commerce, web and telephone customer service is a small, but very consuming resources and cost of the system; Although the purpose of customer shopping is not much different from traditional business, but the purpose of finding related goods is not strong, so the proportion of using the search system is not high. Then the relationship between the goods has become the main means to improve the customer unit price, whether it is the recommendation of a single product page, or the recommendation of the shopping cart page, have a certain proportion of the formation of the purchase. As we all know, the second sale of goods without sales costs and distribution costs of goods.

Finally, the substitution of goods is one of the means to reduce logistics costs, such as we go to buy neutral, in addition to a small number of people and special brand or model needs, the purchase of pens can be used, there is no special requirements, as for this, you are interested in the supermarket to see, Often a supermarket stationery shelves are a certain brand of the pen occupies half of the other brands are only a few sporadic put a few, such a situation makes a brand miscellaneous sales to do the largest, so the purchase, inventory management and so on the cost is reduced. This in the electronic commerce effect may not have the traditional business good, but still has certain effect.