Behind the convenience store

Text | Sun Hongchao

This is a seemingly ordinary convenience store, but it is followed by almost all the major domestic e-commerce platform. This pattern is now uncommon, and the most popular community convenience stores are becoming the focus of the seemingly large-scale O2O bidding on the e-commerce platform.

On March 17, Jingdong Group announced that it will cooperate with about 10,000 convenience stores in 15 cities across the country. This is yet another wave of convenience stores in the wake of the cooperation between Jingdong and Shanxi Tangjiu Group last year. Alipay and La Karak went to different Rhythm, help convenience stores to provide convenient online payment and purchase become their focus.

As the hottest retail format in the industry, convenience stores really look forward to the e-commerce platform. Recently, China Chain Store and Franchise Association released "China City Convenience Store Index" shows that in 2013, the average growth rate of convenience stores in 26 cities across the country was 30%, which was generally higher than that of the traditional department stores and hypermarkets.

Convenience store competition

In the context of the mobile Internet era, O2O has become the focus of most retail industry concerns. E-commerce channels hope to become the upstream suppliers of traditional channels through their own traffic and data advantages, and integrate the online and offline into an ecosystem. The traditional sales channels hope to expand the store categories with the flow of e-commerce businesses and allow Sales system to operate more rapidly.

Now O2O is still in the staking stage, whether Ali, Tencent or Jingdong, how to attract more users to use O2O is a top priority. Who is the e-commerce platform to enter the line of the day made it? Giants answer is: convenience store.

Last March, Amazon China and Shanghai's family-owned convenience store, launched a receipt service. After the user has purchased the goods in the Amazon, he can go to the convenience store of the whole family to mention that he can either pay online and store offline, and convenience stores also support cash, swipe cards and other cash on delivery methods.

Alibaba way into the convenience store is to pay, Alipay and the United States has been the home, the red flag chain, 7-11 and other convenience stores, users spending at the convenience store, you can pay by Alipay sweep code. Data show that at present, Alipay has supported 20,000 convenience stores.

Why do E-commerce platforms devote so much energy to convenience stores? Jingdong Chief Logistics Planner Hou Yi told Netease Technologies that the convenience store is the closest consumer in local life, and the convenience store's inventory is also the closest to the consumer, and the service can be served at any time. This format is very useful for e-commerce enterprises O2O is involved in the most suitable for cooperation.

However, unlike the self-built e-commerce by channel operators (the typical case of Suning Guomei), most of the cooperation now is the traditional retail channels represented by e-commerce platform with convenience stores. E-commerce platform has never been the same as before, showing the desire for offline channels, which in the end is for what?

An offline retailer who asked not to be named said: "The reason why the e-commerce platform was able to rise strongly during this year was because the online retail segment did not do enough. However, the e-commerce platform now has a bottleneck for users. If you want to continue Development, must rely on the advantages of offline retail ground. "

Taking the cooperation between JD.com and No.1 convenience store, for example, the e-commerce platforms are obviously not satisfied to import their own traffic. The greater ambition is to extend their own industrial chain to offline, From the offline drag to the Jingdong online is the fundamental purpose.

From a thousand products to all goods

A natural question is what convenience stores can get from e-commerce platform?

When you bring a convenience store, many people first think of 7-11. The original intention of the two figures is to open a business. However, it is customary to open a 24-hour business now. Convenience stores rely on the advantages of time and place, as well as the rapid adjustment of goods to survive. Convenience stores can build "10-minute consumer circle", no matter at home or near the unit, there is always a large or small convenience store. The convenience it offers such as food, beverage consumption and recharging is temporarily unavailable to other community retailers.

However, the good days do not last forever. In the past two years, reports of "convenience store closures" have been reported frequently and many well-known convenience store brands have been swept away. For the convenience store more worries or electricity suppliers, from 3C, clothing, and then fresh, electricity supplier is entering all the sales industry, and the long tail effect of the electricity supplier determines that it can theoretically show infinite A lot of goods, which is a sharp contrast with convenience stores.

No one will fight. Although there is no way to increase the display space for merchandise, various services are put into the convenience store's world like plug-ins, ranging from payment to collection of packages.

In their own efforts, directly by the e-commerce platform is a good idea?

There are chain convenience store manager to Netease Technology said that once talked with Lynx and Jingdong many times but eventually did not reach a cooperation. The boss directly said too little commission: "Convenience stores can help e-commerce platform to solve the problem of landing, but get back less than the cost of manpower." In his view, access to e-commerce flow is tantamount to drink quench thirst, his response The method is to add more value-added services: various payment, train tickets ticket tickets, and even he would like to introduce his own breakfast service in the near future.

In its view, convenience stores and traditional supermarkets, department stores are even more afraid of the impact of e-commerce, which is because of consumer time-making convenience retail to meet the emergency needs of consumers. In addition, the cost and profit of online retailing has its marginal limit, and online retailing can not fully meet the convenience needs of consumers. More importantly, the greeting of the convenience store owner: "Hello, have you eaten?" Makes it easier for consumers to feel friendly and trustworthy.

Obviously, convenience storekeepers have found their own value in dealing with the impact of e-commerce, and these convenience stores are finding ways to launch counter-attacks.

The easiest way is not to refuse any olive branch delivered by the e-commerce platform. According to Netease technology, many convenience store owners have said that with a number of e-commerce platform are in cooperation. In their view, these e-commerce platform to become a convenience store's natural warehouse and distribution center.

Who is the winner?

At present, online shopping groups are mainly concentrated in 80, 90, the online shopping area is mainly concentrated in a few first-tier cities. However, according to the latest survey conducted by the Internet industry, the demand for online shopping in the middle-aged and under-developed areas is similar to that in the underdeveloped areas. However, the single purchase channel restricts the purchasing power. Many second- and third-tier cities in China do not have a complete online environment; mobile populations are hard to shop online when outdoors; middle-aged and elderly people are shopping cheaply but do not know how to operate the computer; Block in the online shopping outside the door.

And convenience store cooperation so that these consumers have more opportunities to contact e-commerce.

Under the system of Jingdong, the convenience store becomes a node of product delivery, serving the users around the convenience store. Ideally, the user is served 15 minutes after the order is placed. Alipay's payment cooperation mode, the user to pay the scene quickly and easily, eliminating the need to use cash all the trouble.

But for the convenience store, this model is tantamount to working for the e-commerce platform, and ultimately consumers still remember that e-commerce platform, convenience store reduced to e-commerce platform advertising display shop or even part of the distribution.

Perhaps in the future, convenience stores and e-commerce platform there are many modes of cooperation. Now more popular is the terminal model to Lacala, for example, for regular customers in the convenience store with a repayment of La Cala, this is no stranger to the terminal now has the online shopping features. La Kala open shop Po through its community mall for community residents from online to offline community electricity provider O2O services. In addition to La Cala, there are a number of terminal manufacturers are trying to help this traditional mode of convenience store upgrade, some have no way to regular Internet or network are not familiar with the customer can help the shopkeeper to select the goods on the terminal, the final goods can Delivery to home or delivery to the store.

This innovative model has precedent in foreign countries. Argos Argos, the largest O2O supplier in the UK, has integrated the three business models of "catalog sales + B2C + O2O." In other words, consumers can choose from the catalog to buy goods directly from the backstage warehouse shipments, or the use of mobile terminals to achieve online orders to store or pay for delivery, Argos has now covered more than two-thirds of the UK households.