Can traditional bookstores catch up with the last bus of online retailing

Traditional companies that have recently contacted many industries are considering how to use the Web to open new channels and create new retail terminals, including traditional book retailing companies, including apparel companies, and retail companies with 3C products. Because I used to Dangdang for a long time, the book retail more familiar, so today and you discuss the traditional bookstore online retail there is still a chance to this problem.

Not long ago, I contacted the Northern book city, this is just in the domestic a-share listed Liaoning Publishing Group's wholly owned subsidiary, the northern book city mainly studying the United States of Connaught Bookstore, in provinces especially in Liaoning opened dozens of chain bookstore, in the field of book retailing is very innovative and do more successful. The Northern book City is also the fifth largest bookstore in China following Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. The Northern book City very early launched its own online bookstore (www.book365.net), but it belongs to the beginning stage. At the same time in order to do a good job, I also carefully studied under the Zhejiang Xinhua bookstore under the launch of the network bookstore Bookuu bookstore, Zhejiang Province store should be the largest book middlemen, last year's sales scale is 1.5 billion, the number of varieties in the library should be able to reach 50.6 million species, Dangdang and the network of Excellence have used Bookuu bookstore to do the JIT Procurement Center to meet the variety of books, especially excellence, for their dependence on greater.

Here, I will take the northern book city, Bookuu Bookstore and Dangdang, excellent network to compare, to explore the traditional bookstore online retail opportunities.

Escalating price barriers

First we compare the price. In Bookuu Bookstore, Dangdang, excellent online, I randomly selected 4 books, including Dangdang very good at the management of books, but also include a stronger network of youth, Cultural books, both best-selling books, there are new books. "Brand Portfolio Strategy", Bookuu is 75 percent, Dangdang is 49 percent, excellence is 67 percent, "currency war" Bookuu or 75 percent, Dangdang is 67 percent, excellent network is 78 percent, "Zhou Zuoren on Japan," Bookuu or 75 percent, Dangdang is 50 percent, excellent net is 71 percent; Dangdang is 59 percent, excellence and Bookuu Bookstore do not have this book. From the above random survey can be seen, when the average of these books is less than 60 percent, and Bo Library bookstore does not have too many pricing strategies, all are 75 percent, excellent average of about 72 percent. (To add, the price of excellent books than when the higher than when so much is what I did not think of, may be the limits of random sampling methods, perhaps from Moto's Wang HANWA president has been busy selling mobile phones, neglecting the book business. In addition, in order to ensure the rigor of this report, I arranged a random sample of 100 books, Dangdang's average discount is 60 percent, the average net discount is 68 percent, Bookuu bookstore sales average discount is 71 percent, I will be specialized in the future discussion of this topic.

Very scary, Bookuu online book prices than when the higher than 20%, without any price advantage. Study the reason, the original Dangdang has become the country's largest book retailer, in the book sales, already more than any one on the ground store, because of the scale effect, so the cost of its procurement is very low; and Dangdang as a private enterprise, in procurement and find suppliers to return to the point, promotional support on the strength is also very large, When there is a dedicated book purchasing and price negotiation team, while the other large bookstores are state-owned enterprises, and publishing house is a system, basically follow the traditional price policy, will not be in the upstream price too much effort, immediately in the same sales scale, procurement advantages are very wide gap; at the same time, due to the characteristics of online sales, It is easy to form best-selling books, so online bookstores in some best-selling books on the sale of huge, many are dozens of times times the traditional big bookstore, such Books Online bookstore has enough capital to large-scale underwriting customization, etc., the purchase discount is less than 40 percent, 60 percent lower than normal 30% to 40%, forming a great price advantage; Compared to the traditional bookstore, Dangdang excellent network has a lot of media value, so that publishers are more willing to put more effort online.

Moreover, such price advantage will be more and more big. Dangdang, for example, has multiplied its books every year, while traditional bookstores have been slow to grow. Dangdang in some categories has accounted for about 15% of the publisher's share, coupled with the online media value, so in the price advantage than the traditional bookstore will be more and more big. (although Dangdang seems to be slow to develop, but his sales in 3 years may account for the entire industry 20%, then the formation of large-scale profit is very easy to do).

The devil is in detail.

The introduction of the price, and then from the user focus on product details to do the comparison. For example, I've been studying books on branding recently, search the word "brand", the results most meet my requirements is a network of excellence, the first 5 recommended are I feel good brand books; second, Dangdang, in addition to the top 2 out of the "Parenting Encyclopedia: The first brand of contemporary parenting reading", " Your misunderstanding (how to get rid of your negative thinking and control your life)--the psychological self-help global first brand book, the other is the book I want (I think Dangdang's search effect is slightly inferior to excellence, because Dangdang's search logic, the subtitle of the keyword as a priority list, Suggested when the search product department to adjust the logic) and the library bookstore out of the more dare not compliment, for example, only 3 of the top 15 titles contain "brand" in the title of the 2 words, I guess, its search results so bad strong arbitrary because, BOOKUU rules are in accordance with the description of the product in the number of the word ranked priority. To search for "currency war", for example, the first result of the Bookuu bookstore is not this book, but "Money war Jews", because the book's introduction many contain "currency war" four words, completely let me dizzy.

Take the information presented in the single product page as an example. Dangdang and the Network of excellence in the introduction of the author, book introduction, book sections of the electronic version of reading to do a good job, especially Dangdang in the book review to do very well. Take "currency war" as an example, Dangdang's user comments number reached more than 1000, this number has exceeded the watercress. And in the Bookuu bookstore, basically all the books show the goods information, the author introduced a small number of more than 20 lines, and after my in-depth study for a long time before I found that his product information in the "catalog" "Lead" "Preface" "PostScript" is four without any tags, mouse click to see the content, As for user comments, there is little. Notice, user comments and book introduction is the customer buy books very concerned about the reference factors, without these, I judged conversion rate will be lower than 80%. Also, in the Bookuu bookstore less than 3-frequency single product page, the right at least 8 "top" button, I believe if they use tools to test, should be very few people to click. The Northern book city is now the site is even worse, most of the goods do not have a basic profile, pictures, information and so on, very few users can take the next single process to complete. Compared to the traditional websites I have contacted, the Bookuu bookstore has done a good job. I will not enumerate the many friendly problems of these two websites, if I let my project manager take 1 days to study, we should be able to do a 100-page problem that affects customer purchase.

Bookuu Bookstore on the online retail site operations and store planning is not in place is not a case. In fact, many of the traditional companies I have contacted, in the E-commerce experience, technical reserves and network operating experience reserves almost zero, a lot of 2 people will dare to develop a system online, there is no professional to speak of. Some even from the local to find a lack of any experience of the outsourcing companies, alone with their own imagination, the shopping platform online. In addition, many enterprises begin to have no long-term planning for the platform, with the person in charge of the imagination on the function, on the line and feel that there is a problem, and then Lai modified, they do not have the experience of the technical product team, and did not find professional outsourcing companies, project management experience, so the platform-friendly and user experience is very poor, The conversion rate of the entire website and bag rate is very poor, even do a large scale of advertising, but also the effect is very little, it is difficult and when so there are 100 of people's technical team and every year tens of millions of technology investment platform competition. Correspondingly, these traditional enterprises are less experienced in marketing promotion.

Large-scale investment in order to scale up profits

Traditional bookstores are basically state-owned enterprises, although the state-owned enterprises have some advantages in resources, but in innovation and autonomy is still insufficient. And the book industry is a low margin of the industry, selling 100 million of sales of books, can reach 2 million net profit basic already calculate the operation is very good. In this case, it is difficult for the company's leaders to make the decision to invest 2 million in E-commerce projects to do system reform, personnel recruitment and basic operations, not to mention a little large-scale promotion. Such a system can open a traditional shop to compensate for millions of, but it is difficult to make a loss in E-commerce budget. and the electronic commerce and tradition a very big difference is the upfront investment cost is higher, and the upfront investment is not like open a ground shop, can bring a certain scale of sales immediately, not to mention the large-scale profit. They do not like Dangdang and network excellence, have a good tens of millions of of dollars in venture capital to support him to achieve large-scale profit.

Dilemma of online pricing strategy

One of the biggest problems with traditional bookstores doing online retailing is pricing strategy. Take the North book city for example, the traditional store retail price is basically 95 percent or no discount, and even if the sales volume of more than 20% of the purchase business, the price can not be less than 80 percent. But if the online retail, when the average discount is close to 60 percent, even if it is remarkable, also reached about 70 percent, the price of their own online bookstore how to set it? If and when leveling, perhaps the gross margin is only 5-10 points, and compared to their own traditional sales are lower than 20 points, for them are also worried about their online prices too low, will not have a big impact on their own line, the total can not be priced online than the price of group buying is low. But how do you compete with these book-retailing giants when prices are leveled?

Above I simply from the traditional bookstore and Dangdang price comparison, technology products, such as website operating capacity, project investment and pricing contradictions to introduce the traditional bookstore into the online bookstore, the enormous challenges. Of course, I think the challenge is more than that, but here's what I think is most important to impress.

Note: Following the traditional bookstore: not in silence, but in silence. I will focus on the traditional bookstore encounter with the network as the main threat and challenge, as well as the regional traditional bookstore in the online retail opportunities, will be released in the next two days.