Interpreting O2O from the perspective of Platform economics

O2O platform refers to the online to Offline, that is, in the real world of goods or services, and online related services to establish a link between a mobile internet business model. We can understand O2O from three angles.

The first angle refers to the O2O to bring online consumers to the real store or service, that is, on-line inquiries, payment, purchase of goods or services under the line, and then to the line to enjoy service, this is the first layer of understanding of O2O.

The second angle is in the process of electronic commerce, e-commerce by the information flow, capital flow and logistics composition, O2O is characterized by the flow of information and money in exile online, and the logistics put online. Intuitively, the tangible products or intangible services that cannot be delivered by courier are precisely O2O's strengths.

The third angle is that O2O embodies the importance of the mobile internet age for client-side experience support. The end-to-end of the term is the end-to-end experience of a complete process that involves searching for and discovering a demand for goods or services from consumers, to trading and buying, to delivering the goods or services until the final consumption or sharing. Overall, the O2O platform is an intensification of support for the consumer end-to-end experience of the mobile internet age. In this process, the O2O platform has a large number of various business models.

With the rapid development of mobile Internet, the business model of O2O is more and more, it is necessary to establish a complete analysis framework for O2O platform, from which the key elements of O2O platform's successful operation are identified.

First, bilateral users of O2O

On one side of the O2O platform is a large scale of users, the other side is offline resources, including the provision of services to the entity resources and various types of enterprises to provide goods. The O2O platform also includes supporting support that it needs, including search engines, LBS, payments, social media, and many other support forces, which constitute a complete ecosystem. The basic function of the platform is to realize the docking of the scale user and the offline entity resources, and to make the consumer experience chain process become complete and interesting with the aid of support.

Second, the cross side effect of O2O

From the perspective of platform architecture and mechanism, O2O platform of the cross-border network effect is very obvious, that is, the platform side of the increase in users will bring the other side of the user, on the side of O2O, if the increase in consumer users will stimulate the increase in business, this is the most typical such as group buying, if you can unite more consumers, There will be more businesses to join. And if the business resources continue to increase, will also provide consumers with more and more choices, will also be conducive to the increase in consumer users.

Third, the O2O effect of the same side

The same side network effect of O2O platform is different on both sides. The so-called same-side effect, that is, the increase in the user side of the platform to bring the same user increase. For merchants on this side, the same-side network effect is very significant, if a merchant to join the O2O platform to benefit, will directly stimulate other peer merchants to join. But this side of the user is not necessarily so obvious, this is the first because the O2O model is numerous, a considerable number of models to point to a subdivision of the customer base, so the same side of the network effect is not so significant. In addition, it can be seen that the O2O model itself in every consumption experience, strictly speaking, is actually facing an individual consumer, consumers and consumers do not necessarily constitute the impact of each other. Therefore, in this sense, the O2O model in the user sense of the same side of the network effect is far less obvious than the social platform. This also explains why the O2O pattern is increasingly needed to overlay community elements, to constantly enhance its stickiness or to enhance its same-side network effects.

The phenomenon of O2O

The so-called many genera, that is, the platform for the user's stickiness, the user is always loyal to the same platform, or can select multiple platforms in parallel. The O2O effect is different for the users on both sides of the platform. For the user side, many genera phenomenon is more common, whether it is classified information, comments or group buying, users will often expect, through their own participation in multiple O2O platform benefits, users will always find a better, more cost-effective O2O platform, so many genera phenomenon in the user's side is more significant. But in the merchant side, the phenomenon of many genera weakens correspondingly. As a merchant, will always follow the Matthew effect, choose to bring their greatest benefits to the O2O platform to cooperate, such as a hotel is the choice of Ctrip or "Tonight Hotel specials" of the two platforms, due to the power of Ctrip near Monopoly, the hotel will choose to cooperate with Ctrip. In other words, in this process, due to the competition between the platform, sometimes it will limit the merchant side of the multiple behavior.

O2O Platform Integration

Next we examine the degree of O2O platform integration, that is, the O2O platform in the operating process, in order to enhance their competitiveness, need to bundle which components, do not need to bundle which components. Overall, in the four segments of the customer experience chain, there are some components that need to be integrated into the O2O platform, including UGC user creation content, social elements, lbs elements, etc., which are increasingly visible O2O necessary components that need to be integrated into the O2O platform. But for other factors, such as payment, logistics, and so on, different O2O platforms will have different choices, depending on the difficulty of the company's inclusion of specific elements and the cost of comprehensive consideration.

The profit model of O2O

In the O2O platform profit model, simply, O2O can be divided into the media class O2O platform and Channel class O2O platform, the former includes such as classified information sites, comparison search, comment on the site, this kind of focus is through the convergence of traffic sales advertising profits. The latter, such as "Tonight Hotel specials," such as Ctrip, such sites are often through resources and sales between the difference between profit. In the open aspect of O2O platform, in the long run, with the O2O platform for the accumulation of massive user data, in which the successful O2O platform will increasingly become the user consumption behavior of the data center, when the data resources accumulated to a certain amount, we think it will gradually through the open, To encourage more third party developers to develop richer O2O applications to prosper the entire business ecosystem. In fact, this has happened in the field of electrical business.

VII, O2O Platform competition

On the competition side of the O2O platform, you can see that the O2O platform model will have a feature, that is O2O all kinds of commercial platforms are easier to converge, this will bring about a competitive result, that is, on the one hand, we will compete for scarce offline resources to maintain their monopoly on the quality of resources under the control of the line, On the other hand, it is the control of information resources, because this will often constitute a unique appeal to users. Therefore, the competition between monopoly and antitrust, piracy and non piracy in these two types of resources will be staged in the competitive process between the platforms.

Overall, the O2O model is a platform-oriented business model for mobile internet users, connecting online and offline resources, with a strong vitality, and more exciting innovations in the future of mobile internet will occur in O2O platform field.

Micro-Credit Public account: shentuo-2011 or "Shen 2011"

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