The platform strategy of traditional channel electric business development of home building materials

Home building materials, traditional channels for the development of electrical business, almost no exception is the establishment of the industry's vertical platform. Platform also known as B2B2C, or online mall, that is, the recruitment of home building materials industry manufacturers and distributors authorized by the manufacturer in the mall for online sales.

From the operating form, this home building materials industry vertical platform, is the traditional channel business model of online reproduction. Logic, but the operating process is very different.

From the strategic point of view, home building materials, traditional channel construction of an important standard of online platform, that is, whether the online platform can consolidate the traditional channels of competition defense line? Can the construction of the online platform promote the electronic business of the offline channel as a whole? As a traditional channel for home building materials, the fundamental purpose of the development of electricity business is to regain the initiative of competition under the new competition situation of online shopping.

1. Elements of Platform development

This section will be home building materials, traditional channel development online industry vertical platform, explore the following issues: 1 home building materials, traditional enterprises to establish the industry vertical platform for the success of the key is what? 2 compared with the integrated platform of online electric business, what are the advantages and disadvantages of the industry vertical platform established by the traditional enterprise of home building materials? 3 How to establish a vertical platform for home building materials industry?

First, the platform is also called the online mall. As a mall, there should be merchants and users. It can be said that merchants and users constitute the home building materials Online Mall The most basic two major success factors. There is a very delicate connection between the merchant and the user. The platform has enough merchants to attract enough users. On the contrary, the platform has enough merchants, also can attract more and better merchants.

It's like chicken and egg. As for whether it is a chicken or an egg first, this is actually a question of how to develop gradually. The relationship between the merchant and the user basically dominates the development strategy of building the online platform for the traditional enterprise of home building materials, so we should attach great importance to it.

Secondly, compared with the existing electric business platform to establish a home building materials channel, the traditional channel to build online platform what advantages and disadvantages? We are still focusing on the two core elements of the platform: merchant and user. Generally believed that the electric business platform has the rich user flow, this is the electric quotient advantage. and traditional channel business because years of industry precipitation, have rich supplier resources, this is the advantage under the line. However, this point of view deserves further discussion.

We say that if the number of users in the line, the traditional channel after years of accumulation, it is certainly more than the electronic platform has more user resources. The advantage of the user resources of the electric business platform is that the local surface is now on the number of users. Yes, we are talking about the competitive advantage of online platforms. If the same logic to analyze the line under the platform of the merchant resources, we also found that: online, the electric business platform has more network merchants, and they have a network of long network of network operators, but also the traditional enterprise to eat crabs. They are familiar with the rules of the game, they are familiar with the shopping habits of netizens, they have formed a set of business processes in line with the development of the electric business, training their own corps team. If this standard to judge the respective merchant resources, traditional channel business still have advantages?

Write here I think of the "Water Margin" in the waves in white white Zhang in the battle Li story. Objectively speaking, if we talk about online resources, the traditional channels are not advantageous to both merchant and user.

Finally, talk about how to develop the traditional channel of home building materials on the issue of online platform. Because the traditional channel line in the merchant and the user two aspects do not occupy the superiority, therefore in the development online platform, unless has to take the desperate heavy investment method, the only alternative path is to adopt the Step-by-step method.

What are the cards in the hands of traditional channels? That's the offline merchant and the user. How do you turn offline resources into online resources? This is the story of chicken and egg. If your users are not online, the traditional dealers will not be active online, if your merchant is not online, your users will not be online. So how do we solve this annoying knot?

The relationship between chicken and egg is not formed in a day.

2. Create a new distribution system

We have talked many times, home building materials industry competition in the future of the core, will be around two aspects: first, the network of household decoration consumer access, the second is the product distribution system to rebuild. Here to talk about the latter point.

As we all know, home building materials industry, one of the biggest feature is the need for line coordination to complete such as experience measurement installation and maintenance services. The traditional channels under the line has a huge market and the dealer system of production enterprises, so its platform development should be closely around this strategic advantage to carry out.

and electric business platform because of the lack of such offline physical store advantage, at first also in a succession of efforts to establish their own offline existence, such as the Cat's Love Bee tide, and the beauty of the online experience shop, is this attempt. However, from the current electrical business in the home building materials industry development, online dealers (mainly Taobao day cat) has begun to sell online and under the line services PT-assisted strategic planning.

This means that the future of household building materials will be the development of electrical dealers have a different structure of the distribution system. One is the traditional distribution structure based on the line under the integration of the distribution system, the other is to go online sales and online services TP supplemented by a new distribution system.

Construction of the online platform before the establishment of an effective distribution system, this is our home building materials, the traditional channels of a little important advice. Because the traditional channels established by the online platform, and the pure electricity business platform in the home building materials channel is different, the fundamental difference is that the traditional channels of the online platform should be closely linked with the market system under the line. So the online platform not only to solve the online sales before and after a series of offline service issues, but also more important to solve how on the same platform at the same time show the production of enterprises and their distributors around the shop.

Yes, the traditional channel of the online platform needs to display both the manufacturer and its distributor's shop.

Two reasons to do this: first, we need to keep in mind that the most important mission of the traditional channel online platform is to enhance the core competitiveness of the offline mall. The future trend of market competition will be online and offline marketing integration. The display of traditional shopping mall merchants online is an inevitable trend. If in the beginning of the construction of the online platform, the traditional channels can not correctly deal with the platform on the production enterprise and its distributors, the relationship between the platform will be in the development of serious obstacles.

I am in the "Home building materials production enterprise" dual-track "" A paper, talked about this situation. As a result of the development of the platform of the pure electric business, can completely disregard the existing distribution system under the enterprise line, through the line of product and price below the dual track to help home building materials industry to achieve online sales. Traditional channels do not have the luxury of freedom.

However, for the traditional channels of home building materials, if the establishment of the online platform did not integrate into the line of many dealers in the shopping malls, that this platform to a considerable extent independent of the offline market system development, to assist the offline shopping malls to consolidate its competitive defense can not play a role. If you want to put the offline mall dealers into the online platform, we must solve the platform at the same time set up production enterprises and shop dealers around the relationship.

In fact, the solution to this relationship is the home building materials manufacturers have long awaited the "line under the integrated distribution program." At present, most of the domestic building materials industry enterprises have not yet developed the electricity quotient, the key is the lack of such a line under the integrated distribution scheme. It can be imagined that even if the traditional channels have a wealth of offline supplier resources, but in the platform construction of investment, if not able to provide such an integrated distribution program, still encounter great resistance.

The second need to show the production of enterprises and their distributors, the reason is that, compared with the marketing system of online electric business platform, traditional channel existing distribution system is its biggest competitive advantage. In the process of electric business development, the online electric business platform is bound to strive to break the traditional distribution system structure, and the development of its advantageous online pure sales line service TP distribution system. If the traditional channel in the development of the online platform does not adhere to the original distribution system structure, it is in vain to give up the existing competitive advantage. This is not allowed by competition. Therefore, the traditional channel online platform construction, to consciously strengthen the line under the integrated distribution system.

A word summary: The competition of distribution system is home building materials industry, one of the core of the development of competitive power, traditional channels in the development of online platforms, must be planned in advance home building materials production line under the integrated distribution structure.

3. Difficulties in the development of online platforms

Since then, we have made clear the traditional construction of home building materials channel business platform for the strategic significance and basic requirements. Again: the traditional channel of the platform construction, to be able to improve the traditional shopping malls in the future of the whole network of the core competitiveness of the era. To achieve this goal, the online platform must provide home building materials production enterprise line under the integrated distribution of the solution.

This section discusses how to build an online platform. Still back on the online platform two key factors: merchant and user.

For the traditional channels, the majority of the merchants and users who have been settling for many years online, now want to develop the on-line platform, the immediate question is: Where does the merchant come from?

It may be immediately conceivable that the merchant comes from two parts – the merchant on the online platform and the manufacturing enterprise of the traditional channel.

It seems that the goal is clear, the work of investment does not seem to be very difficult: with the traditional channels for many years the accumulation of brand image, many businesses should be willing to participate in the online platform, especially if the threshold to join the platform is not very high words.

But the actual situation and imagination may be just the opposite, the traditional channels of online platform for investment often encounter unexpected difficulties. For those who have joined the ranks of manufacturers, their first response is: Is there enough traffic on the platform? The flow of online platforms became the first obstacle to investment.

And for those who have not yet "electrocuted" the production enterprises, they are more worried about online sales and the existing distributor system conflict how to do? To know that these companies have ample time to join Taobao Day Cat and other electric platform, they did not do, because these electric business platform failed to provide them with a line under the integration of the distribution scheme. Now the traditional channel of the online platform, can you to your production enterprises to provide online integrated distribution program?

Lack of user traffic, the lack of online integrated distribution of effective solutions, is the traditional channel construction online platform for investment difficulties of the two major obstacles.

According to our analysis, the traditional channels of home building materials out of the offline market separate development of the online platform, will be due to insufficient platform flow and lead to investment work difficult to carry out. And in the short term to improve the flow of the platform, is a huge amount of capital investment. In the current home building materials industry has not yet encountered the fatal blow to the electric dealer, the possibility of large-scale input to the electrical business is still small, unless you can see the flow of investment in the short-term returns.

At the same time, the lack of the number and quality of the platform merchants, it is difficult to attract a large number of customers browse the Platform mall and the next single payment. This makes the plan of the online platform deep into the first chicken or the first egg of the circle, chicken and eggs can not be.

It is worth pointing out that even though the initial traditional channels have invested heavily in the flow of online platforms, they may still face risks:

1 platform start-up period, all aspects of the adjustment, including the team, mall design, operating experience, marketing, user experience, and so on, so even if there is a large-scale flow of input, a variety of conversion rates will not be as mature as the electric business platform so ideal;

2 Home building Materials Mall operation is always a mystery, we have seen many have quite accurate flow of the mall business situation is unsatisfactory. The combination of line lines may be a factor. But there are certainly other unknown factors that need further study.

We analyze a series of practical difficulties of the traditional channel to develop the electric business platform alone. This may be a lot of home building materials traditional channel development of the main reasons for the electric dealers. More importantly, the independent development of the electric business platform for the traditional channels, and can not provide for its offline shopping malls to build an effective line of defense, thereby enhancing the core competitiveness of the entire traditional channel.

Therefore, whether in order to improve the traditional channels of core competitiveness, or to more effectively solve the online platform merchants and users of the two core elements of the problem, may be the traditional channel of the development of the electric business must be from the offline shopping malls to start.

This is the main topic of my next article.

(This article is the original, only representative of the personal point of view.) All rights reserved, reproduced or quoted please indicate the source. ）