E-commerce should be wary of excessive market segmentation

&http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/37954.html ">nbsp; People usually divide Internet services into portals, search engines, E-commerce, online games and so on. Here, E-commerce is a narrow concept, it mainly refers to the "logistics business."





when the concept of E-commerce rose in the middle of the 90, scholars had carefully sketched her vision. In the broad sense of e-commerce, "logistics business" is only the most basic business, in addition, "digital data stream Business", "Information flow Business" is also an important part. In fact, the news information and search engine in the portal are typical "information flow business". News and search engines are two "faces" of information services. The essence of search engine is information service, because you want to get the information that is valuable to you, not the search itself. News information, as a relatively passive way of obtaining information, can be summed up as a push way, and search engine is an active way of obtaining information, which can be summed up as a pull way.




The essential function of
electronic commerce is to make communication and transaction cost low, high efficiency and great effect. Traditional industry Marketing Classic theory, there are market areas and market segmentation of the argument. At the present stage, electronic commerce is a kind of business form which is closely tied with the old economy, so it must be influenced by it. That is, market niches and market segments are the subconscious guide for E-commerce entrepreneurs and are beginning to go to extremes: continuous market segmentation, constant search for the next market area, and call it innovation. Innovation, innovation and innovation become a curse on the head. In fact, innovation is not everything. Moreover, this kind of innovation is only to discover, to dig. Not that E-commerce does not need market segmentation, but the excessive market segmentation will only "diametrically opposed". Traditional industries have already experienced this dilemma. Philip Kotler in "horizontal marketing" pointed out: the continuous application of market segmentation and positioning strategy, despite the expansion of scale, will eventually lead to market saturation and extreme segmentation. In the long run, market segmentation does more harm than good, and it will reduce the success rate of products.





Since the Chinese Internet has the concept of a portal, there is a distinction between parallel portals and vertical portals. One is to do the whole, one is to do the professional. The former is a supermarket, the latter is a store. Later, the search engine began to rise, the same way, there are parallel search and vertical search theory. In short, once someone wants to do the whole, do wide, there will be someone to do the special, do fine. "One inch wide, one Li deep" is the current entrepreneur's criterion. "One inch wide, one deep" is certainly true. But the constant search for market area, excessive market segmentation not only repeat the traditional industry "more harm than good", but also contrary to the nature of E-commerce. The reason is that the excessive subdivision leads to higher user cost, lower efficiency and less effect. For example, search engine, user shopping, have a special shopping search engine, if shopping is to buy books, there is a special search engine (do search engine). On the surface it looks as if a ring is set, it is a personal service.  But in this way, there will be search engines.





e-commerce market is a "symptom" of excessive subdivision. These "signs" are not market-oriented results, although user needs do become diverse and personalized. The reason is that, one, the information explosion, so that "message information" to become a demand, two or one-stop, intelligent information Services solutions are missing. Why the search engine vertical, will be divided into the public, the root cause is this. Market segmentation brings relatively clean classified information services, and the business generated after market segmentation becomes "information information", although information may be more valuable than information itself, but there are a lot of limitations, such as time, such as cycle and so on. At the same time, each time for information "informatization", will form a huge burden. In the end, "information" will degenerate into a deluge of "information", which makes people take pains and feel meaningless.





when we are in the face of "information", and even "information information" and do not know what to do, the benefits of E-commerce to us from what to talk about? Therefore, in the long-term, e-commerce should avoid excessive market segmentation, learning the traditional industry of horizontal marketing, create a new market, the second to speed up their own one-stop, intelligent service steps.

Author: Hu Yu in January 2006