7-11 has become a representative of Japanese consumer culture

7-11 has become a representative of Japanese consumer culture, but in fact, he is from the United States. Its predecessor called the Nan Lu Ice-making company, was born in 1937, mainly make ice. The company began selling laundry detergent, bread, eggs, yogurt and other daily necessities in order to expand the scale of its operations. Ten years later, the company was renamed 7-11. The meaning of this name is to advocate a kind of early to bed and early to rise in life, seven o'clock up, 11 o'clock sleep.

In the 1970, the Japanese Itochu Hall of the Suzuki-sensitive text will be 7-11 introduced to Japan, only to open the great road of 7-11.

Around this time, the life of Suzuki-Wen began to converge with 7-11.

1975, 7-11 franchise stores developed to 69, turnover exceeded 4.8 billion yen, more gratifying is Fudao County Jss city's Tiger pill shop, created a 24-hour all-weather business new example; 1980, chain stores up to 1000; 1984, franchise stores reached 2000 In 1990, the chain stores doubled, reaching 4,000, and 1995, more than 6,000 franchise stores, 1999, chain stores reached 8,000; 2001, the chain stores to 9,125 ..... By the year 1989, when the bubble economy collapsed, the company was still growing, and Suzuki-Wen hosted 7-11, becoming the real control of the US convenience store group.

Suzuki-Wen is a visionary entrepreneur who relies not only on the chaebol, but also on the struggle to make changes to the entrenched chaebol. So why on earth would he let 7-11成 be the king of retailing? Let us slowly analyze his philosophy of business, I believe that his philosophy is not only the traditional retail business of reflection and foresight, but also for the field of E-commerce has a reference, even if my analysis is a little attempt.

First, the deeply rooted user experience

Suzuki sensitive text requires every manager to each product, every shop, every employee must have a full understanding. In particular, he asked that every store should train its employees in the service and give them the best experience. For example, 7-11 selling lunch box, some customers to late, lunch box sold out. At this time, 7-11 of the staff will remind you, go to the convenience store next door can also be bought, and some even recommend their home of the kind of lunch box delicious.

This is hard for many companies to imagine, like you go to Sony's counter to ask Panasonic's shop where. Suzuki Wen thought, to give customers good service to get their recognition. He is also good at listening to consumer opinion, for example, a customer wrote to him, said the price tag is wrong, but the staff was not very good attitude, but said coldly, marked wrong, not the prices.

Suzuki immediately wrote to the shop, demanding rectification, make mistakes must apologize.

Suzuki-Wen does have an amazing understanding of most products, and he advocates a new way of life to improve the user experience. For example, after the peach in the fridge three hours after the taste is the sweetest, so he put up posters in the shop, telling consumers 7-11 of the peach is unparalleled; rice is so, long time to store rice will affect the taste, 7-11 proposed, to put the rice in the fridge, And consumers need the right amount every time they buy.

7-11 Many products are provided by the supplier and do not specify the method of use. For such products, Suzuki sensitive text requires employees to try their own, trial, and then provide consumers with the method of use.

For example, they used to sell an instant noodle that was not written on the package. Suzuki Sensitive Wen let employees get their own bubbles, the results found the best taste of water, and then posted a small notice affixed to the packaging of instant noodles, tell consumers how to bubble.

Also for example candy, every time there is a new product, Suzuki will ask staff to observe, candy will be opened a few days. The consumer is then prompted to finish the meal within a few days.

I have to admire the Japanese pursuit of service. Those who clamor for the user experience all day, should face the firmament, ask themselves, can do 7-11 of the user's true thoughtfulness, even if only 10% or better.

Second, to prevent sales first

This is very important, it can be said, is to abandon the simple pursuit of sales strategy, so that 7-11 security through the bubble economy, and the trend of growth. When the economy is growing at a high speed, sales are naturally rising without a fee, but in the downturn it is hard to boost sales by 10%. Suzuki's strategy is to focus on profit margin growth and reduce inventory. "We have to look at inventory with a harsh eye," excluding bad sales and selling only good products. ”

In fact, there is no special Suzuki-sensitive text is a good way to "look at every commodity, think carefully." "He asked every clerk to report on every product, and the things that were hard to sell were quickly cleared away." He put forward the concept of "single product Management", which is a complex task, but it does improve profitability.

Suzuki also pointed out that, in addition to controlling the quantity, it is more important to improve the quality of products. He cited an example, such as 7-11 constantly update the style of wine cups, some staff said, a lot of people in the vicinity have bought, why do you want to update? Suzuki Sensitive text answer is, as long as the product is good, there will be someone repeat buy, constantly updated. The same is true.

Suzuki sensitive text to the management of a single product to make people heinous. The 7-11 introduced red bean meal is popular, but when they first started doing it, the taste was quite general. Suzuki Sensitive Wen Let the staff responsible for red bean rice, and finally found that the red bean rice steamer steaming will stimulate the red bean flavor, and at that time the shop is boiled with water. So, Suzuki sensitive Wen ordered, each store bought a large steamer, for a time, the streets of Japan are red bean flavor.

In terms of product concerns, there is a story to be thought-provoking. At that time, a senior executive to the Suzuki sensitive Wen recommended new business, he said, the retail industry is now almost saturated, to continue to develop, it is necessary to enter new areas, such as opening a restaurant what. Suzuki Wen asked him, you eat 7-11 of the bento box. The dude said no. Suzuki scolded him that if even their own products are not enough to understand, do not want to upgrade the quality of the existing business, even if he did a new industry, will certainly not succeed.

Third, strict management

We said a single product management, and in day-to-day management, Suzuki Wen also never compromise. He has produced a "work schedule" that allows every employee to know when to do something, the horizontal axis of the schedule is 24 hours in hours, and the longitudinal axes are filled with the clerk's name; The work plan is reflected in the table in the form of histograms, and the starting and ending points of the histogram indicate the starting time and end time of the work, respectively. The work content fills in the center of the histogram; Work items have cleaning, ordering, inspection of goods, goods on the shelves, check the freshness of goods, decorate the display of goods, check temperature, newspaper returns (this is 7-11 the only goods can be returned), supplementary consumables, currency exchange, the development of sales daily, as well as "free to do other things", " Take a look around the station after work, "put things back where they were", "Don't whisper in your spare time" and all kinds of instructions and reminders ... He attaches great importance to the examination and evaluation after the post, specially promulgated the "Work Checklist", list all job items, each employee checks their own performance against the requirements of each item; This kind of inspection generally takes every half month, one months, two months, three months as the unit, the "Work Checklist" by oneself and other related personnel fills in separately, The use of "0" and "X" scale to carry out two-part evaluation, or use 1~3 scale to carry out three-stage evaluation, and some use 1~5 scale to implement five-stage evaluation. In order to standardize the settlement of hospitality behavior, he specially printed the "Guest Behavior effect form", requiring every clerk to do the same: Customer settlement, must shout "Welcome"; in the face of customers, colleagues can not whisper, can not chat; to clearly explain the name of each item, price, and checkout ; When confirming the customer's advance payment, it is not possible to put the advance payment into the cash register until the account is fully completed; When the customer buys lunch box or food, ask "need to heat up"; When the customer waits, they must say "keep you waiting"; only one person checks out, and a lot of customers wait, shouting "please checkout" to colleagues. When many customers wait for the checkout in another place, say "Please check this way"; The heated goods must be handed over to the customer to ensure the product is warm ...

Based on his years of experience, he named his philosophy of management "hypothesis and verification". This is not a mysterious philosophy, compared to the "God Lovers" to be more straightforward, but very few people can be flexible and effective in practical work.

Let's try to verify this simple theory from the 7-11 ordering system. Suzuki-Wen believes that sustained attention will be the emergence of a hypothetical, to be validated, and the core of sustained attention is the professional system. For example, he assumes that 7-11 of the rice and balls sold are different kinds of goods, so different professionals are needed to manage the ordering system. The task of these professionals is to verify the reliability of the data, thereby improving the quality.

Based on this idea, 7-11 of the 6, 7 employees are responsible for ordering, they should not only pay attention to the sale of a single product, complete the order, but also from the early and late three hours to analyze the goods flow.

The further sublimation of this idea reflects the unique view of Suzuki-wen for data. In retailing, there have been suggestions for the idea of running an unmanned supermarket, which means that, from stock to sales, it is managed unattended, with data based on POS machines and computer systems.

Suzuki sensitive to this idea, he insisted that the POS machine and computer systems, all need human control in order to be full of vitality, single product management can make goods and services have the soul, break the consumer's sense of tiredness.

Ito China Church each week at the top will have lunch, food is from a superior restaurant set to the take-away, taste good, but the more times we eat, the more people feel boring. That, says Suzuki, is the consumer's sense of tiredness. He thought that in terms of food, we had to consider different tastes. Many shops think, noodles this thing is suitable for summer to eat, refreshing delicious, fair. But many businessmen unexpectedly is, when the weather is cold, eat accustomed to those warm heart warm stomach food, occasionally also want to eat mouth noodles to Quhuo. This is the reason why many people eat ice cream in winter.

So, the core of the theory of verification hypothesis, in fact, from the consumer, do not let go of any details.

4th, care for things that seem useless.

such as the temperature and the humidity of the weather. Suzuki thinks that these seemingly unrelated things can just find people's lifestyle changes. In fact, this view is really simple, such as the cold weather, we will start to drink hot coffee, when the weather is hot, people need to drink cool drinks. But it's not easy to do that. Suzuki-WEN asked the store chief to ask the clerk every day, what is the weather today, how much temperature is, next week, next month, all year round ...