The future of e-commerce in China

The internet, like waves and waves, erodes the coastline of the traditional economy and, like solvents, is or is about to dissolve the commodity in our traditional economy and the various economic activities related to commodities in batches, to make them Internet and e-commerce. Through this dissolution, the internet erodes and destroys bookstores, audio-visual publishing, foreign newspapers, computer cities, small department stores and wholesale markets. China's traditional retail links play an important role in the agency channel sales, will also face differentiation and role adjustment in the era of E-commerce.

The ultimate model of the future of Internet and e-business is that you and I are all in an omnipresent, ubiquitous network, the Internet and traditional economy, e-commerce and traditional business, will be you have me, I have you, we will ultimately not really distinguish between the boundaries. Recently Wang and Ma Yun for the next ten years of E-commerce betting, then may not find who loses who won the basis of judgment, because we now see or define E-commerce, only ten years after the most original and the most external small part.

After mastering the Internet and the essential characteristics of e-commerce and the significance of E-commerce revolution, we can from the following several aspects of research, analysis and prediction of the future of China's e-commerce.

Compared with Western countries, China's consumers seem to be more enthusiastic about online shopping, which can be attributed to China's basic national conditions, business environment and consumer culture of significant differences, so the United States and other Western countries are not equal to the future of China's e-commerce.

We look at the future of E-commerce from the perspective of consumers, see also should not only be one of the world's largest consumers of the Internet to buy, but also to see the network to buy people in the eastern and western regions of the difference, urban and rural differences. China's huge urban and rural differences and the level of economic development in the east and the West, the development of E-commerce in China has a long and wide depth hinterland, and a relatively long high-speed development stage.

Internet development in China over the past more than 10 years, the number of people with a slightly longer (over 35 years of age) is still significantly below the average level of internet use, especially among consumers of online shopping; In the next 5-10 years, the infiltration of E-commerce in this segment should have reason to accelerate the ascension, The number of online shoppers has grown in two directions at the same time from both ends of the age distribution: A growing group of young adults and a batch of people starting to reach the Internet and learn to buy online.

Cheap is still the biggest driving force for consumers to shop online, therefore, most of the Internet buyers have not turned the net purchase into a habit, a lot of internet buyers of the prerequisite is that the price of the purchase of goods must be cheaper than the physical stores a certain extent; and some online shoppers still have security concerns on the Internet, For example, set the price limit for online shopping, over the price limit will not consider the net purchase, and so far not online shoppers, many do not dare to open online banking, dare not put their own bank account "on the Internet."

All of these will change, the direction of change is that the online purchase of consumer goods on the Internet will be expanded, the annual average number of net purchases and the annual average amount of online purchases will be increased year by year.

Businesses and consumers are an interactive relationship. China's businesses are more easily herd to compete, in the past few years electric Shangdou to young people as the main consumer, catering to young people's consumption preferences for promotional promotions, but also just in time to catch up with the high enterprise inventory, the power of competition between the lower prices, so China's e-commerce has been unable to exceed the demand for the first stage of development. In fact, the Chinese Internet from the content to the form of the 35 years old or above the mature population discrimination or neglect, presumably this is also one of the reasons for the low proportion of users in this group.

Because the merchant's stock is not easy to digest for one or two years, e-commerce will be more and more attention of businesses, which is conducive to the traditional retail to the online retail acceleration of migration, but the disadvantage is that the theme of E-commerce will continue to stay in the pursuit of cheap, between merchants and the site with blood as a competitive means of the low-level development stage, Online retailing is only a simple alternative to retail under the net, and E-commerce is limited in improving economic efficiency.

Traditional economic origins of the business in general on the adaptation and application of E-commerce is not enough experience, so at this stage, they will also rely more on Taobao, Jingdong, Suning, gome, only goods such as electronic commerce platform to carry out online retail and distribution. But the development of e-commerce to a certain stage, they should have their own electric business official website, and a large part will also be their official website as a real flagship store, commanding the enterprise's online retail business.

Taobao is currently a single major industry pattern, in fact, to deter the traditional brand enterprises of organic growth and development, so that the traditional brand enterprises or helpless, or from the sweet E-commerce grafted to the cat and Taobao this external body, and it is easy to treat it as a traditional offline channel of an online extension, But can not realize that the electronic commerce brings to the clothing industry not only is the sale link revolution.

The distribution of Internet traffic in China is extremely uneven, a handful of internet giants such as Baidu, Tencent and Taobao control the flow of Internet access, exports and distribution of traffic, leading to high Internet traffic prices in China, enterprises unbearable burden, which is not Chinese businesses and Western enterprises like the construction and operation of their own official website is a major reason. Most of the brand enterprises to build and operate their own electric business official website, will be China's e-commerce development of an important symbol of maturity.

Baidu should be the most dynamic to help enterprises to build E-commerce official website, only in this way, Baidu can change the current awkward situation of e-commerce marginalization, and from Taobao and the cat there to their own market share. In more than a trillion yuan total online retail sales, Baidu's turnover contribution, Taobao one-stop shopping situation is very limited. More let Baidu suffer is, consumers in the final purchase decision and the next single shopping before each link, it is possible to use the Baidu search, but the final deal occurred in Taobao or cat, resulting in Baidu search turnover rate on the book is very low, and Taobao and the conversion rate of the cat is very high on the book, Baidu lost a lot of potential advertisers and advertising revenue.

Taobao since the 2005 beat ebay, a ride on the dust. Over the years, Taobao and the cat separated from Taobao in China's online retail turnover has been accounted for about 75% of the market share. Taobao has almost become synonymous with online shopping. About 80% of the online shopping consumers are in Taobao first learned to shop on the Internet, so Taobao in possession of monopolistic market share, but also for China's online retail market to train 200 million consumers. Many online shoppers in Taobao learned to shop on the Internet, began to cross out Taobao on other sites shopping, we call Taobao "spillover effect."

One of the essence of the electric business is to eliminate or reduce the intermediate link between the manufacturer and the consumer in the process of commodity circulation, to save the cost and cost of forming the intermediate links and to promote economic efficiency. But we are now buying and selling classes of the consumer Web site at the same time can not achieve savings, but also added to the flow to obtain costs as the core of the huge operating costs and marketing costs, so that the electricity business become very economic.

We should understand that the transition from the traditional economy to the network economy, as well as the transition from the planned economy to the market economic period, will result in a period of confusion and inefficiency. In the coming years, this confusion and inefficiency will continue to exist and may even be worse, but the future of China's e-commerce must be bright.

(The author is president of Zheng Wang Consulting Co., Ltd.)