Over the years, we have witnessed the rise of China’s e-commerce industry’s rapid overtaking. Stacking cats, cutting a knife, Olympiad questions, as long as you are a member of online shopping, November must not escape these hot activities.
And unmanned logistics, smart warehousing, cloud brain and other technological elements have also become the basic configuration of the promotion ceremony.
Every time at this time, look at the reports about Black Friday, and people will never be able to stand the national pride. When we fight 100 megabytes of fiber, they still have a lot of people to fight down the line; here, return a little mobile phone to wait for the door, but there must be personally driving to the offline store operation; as for the live AR community new retail all kinds of tricks to play Flying up, and watching foreign friends is completely a decade of style.
Although the “Black Five” overseas shopping festival is difficult to compare with the phenomenon-level double eleven, regardless of the ranking and sales data, the opposite retailers are not as imaginative. Through the technology climbing of overseas retail giants, we may be able to inspire us in the “hands-on”.
Offline slams against e-commerce giants: the opposite of US retail sales
The approach of Christmas has also opened the curtain for consumers of overseas e-commerce to compete for the war.
Unlike the Chinese online giant’s uncontroversial dimension reduction and drainage for the offline, the downward line of the US retail industry is extremely obvious. Among them, the PK of the two old rivals of Amazon and Wal-Mart is the most interesting.
A notable change is reflected in the consumer survey of online giant Amazon in three consumer surveys conducted by retail analyst firm First Insight in December 2017, September 2018 and September 2019, respectively, for approximately 1,000 people. The proportion of people from 80% all the way to 40%, while the shopping volume of commercial giant Wal-Mart increased from 47% to 55%.
The attitude of consumers is also reflected in the performance of the capital market. Since the beginning of this year, Amazon’s share price has risen by about 19%, while Wal-Mart’s share price has risen by more than 26%.
In the past few years, we have not heard the news of Amazon going offline, but also watched the pace of e-commerce transformation that Wal-Mart bought and bought.
Although the ultimate fight of the “Black Five” has not yet arrived, from a fundamental point of view, it is clear that Wal-Mart is more optimistic.
The two global PK’s global retail giants, how did they light up their own technology trees to grow such an opposite attitude? It is a very interesting thing.
Logistics killing, experience new ideas: e-commerce infrastructure PK
First Insight CEO Greg Petro said in an interview, “(For consumers), the excitement of the Amazon Express box is weakening…”
There is no doubt that the most intense competition and change is naturally the infrastructure supported by e-commerce.
Amazon’s global compliance center, which has been driven by more than 100,000 robots and unified logistics, is regarded as a secret weapon in the e-commerce field.
In the past year, Amazon has also continuously consolidated its moat and further increased its investment in logistics in order to completely defeat the opponent.
For example, through the “Uber-style” cooperation with local drivers, all Prime members in 2000 specific regions are provided with free grocery delivery within two hours. Unmanned storage, drone delivery, also joined Amazon’s “last mile delivery”Luxury technology package.
In the face of Amazon’s 109 global operations centers, the only Wal-Mart with a hard work is not at all. Although the e-commerce executives have invested billions of dollars in business since taking office in 2016, it is not that simple to get to the Amazon network system when it comes to logistics and distribution services.
In the past year, Wal-Mart’s most influential breakthrough in logistics should start with its last mile delivery pilot project, InHome Delivery.
The power of Amazon Logistics gives it the ambition and possibility to build an Everything Store, while Wal-Mart, which has an advantage in the coverage of Shangchao Store, will order directly when pursuing online and offline integration. The goods come into the room and are delivered to the customer’s refrigerator – even if the customer is not at home. Where is this “the last mile”, is this already a “negative mile”?
Wal-Mart works with Smart Home, a smart home innovation company, to provide access solutions for front door smart locks and garage doors. When consumers place an order and choose the InHome service, Wal-Mart employees use smart access technology, wear a proprietary camera, deliver the in-transit live image to the customer, and allow remote control.
Overall, the US retail industry is launching a “killing” of distribution efficiency, driven by the two giants of Amazon and Wal-Mart. Time is the main target. Although Amazon is a “one-stop logistics store” for global retailers in this battle, it has more scale advantages, but Wal-Mart’s experience innovation is also regaining a key city for itself.
In the latest survey data, sales of Wal-Mart e-commerce in the third quarter increased significantly by 37%, and many consumers began to reduce the number of shopping on Amazon.
Some soft, some hard: unmanned future battlefield
Erase the other’s core areas and become the hidden and unavoidable minds of the two major retailers. In the past year, Amazon’s new online store, such as Amazon Go, has opened up to the public and has increased its opening speed to enhance its competitiveness in the physical field.
While compared to Amazon, where data and technology output are very strong, Wal-Mart does not seem to be as weak as it might seem. Although 2016 has only begun to enter the frontier technology fields such as AI and robotics, by 2018, Wal-Mart’s patents in related fields have far surpassed Amazon.
They both took a fancy to each other’s cake and tried to exploit the unmanned technology to unearth new profit points. Between the attack and the defense, there is a different advanced route for unmanned retail.
The most obvious difference is that AmazonGo is known for its data and algorithm advantages. In the store, HD smart cameras cover every corner of the mall’s ceiling. Through the integration of computer vision, deep learning algorithms, sensors, etc., Amazon has realized the experience of automatically monitoring the status of goods, judging the recognition of user behavior, and taking away the queue.
The advantage of “soft power” is obvious, and it has indeed achieved “no sense of shopping” in the experience. But the limitation of the algorithm is that it is more sensitive to changes in the environment and parameters, so more restrictions need to be added. For example, the accuracy of the algorithm application can not always be maintained at a stable level, and the store needs other ways to control the damage caused by theft, so Amazon Go is currently only open to Amazon Prime members to reduce management risks.
In contrast, Wal-Mart’s patent on unmanned technology is more focused on the application of physical tools. For example, using a drone or robot to patrol the storefront, real-time detection of missing items on the shelf, another drone is responsible for replenishing the shelves.
There is also the use of temperature-controlled drones for transmission, and the introduction of digital maps in the mobile app to quickly guide shoppers to the correct location of the item.
Also check the floor and safety hazards of the supermarket to prevent dangers such as oil spills. In the view of a chain store president, “This is the most important robot application scenario in the supermarket.”
This does not mean that Wal-Mart is not strong enough in algorithms. In fact, Bossa Nova Robotics, who works in its store, just acquired Hawxeye, an AI company with face detection and object recognition technology, in July this year. But obviously, Wal-Mart is more focused on introducing new technologies into the traditional store environment, rather than building an exclusive shopping mall for AI like Amazon.
Two solutions for digital assets
The premise of “technical muscles”, digital resources seem to be a prerequisite for not being able to escape. Amazon once crushed the core weapon of traditional retailers, which is an information warfare of personal analytical data. The collected data can be used to optimize product location and improve the browsing experience of the website, so that it can truly drive the growth of e-commerce business. .
Even online, each time a user makes a purchase on an Amazon credit card or uses a prime membership service at a store, Amazon gets very valuable payment information. For example, it is known that members have booked a two-hour delivery service at Whole Foods, and it is possible to recommend products more clearly to them.
In traditional retail companies, less than 25% of companies have dedicated data analysis teams. In Wal-Mart’s stores, wanting to use their own mobile payment Walmart Pay to connect user information, in today’s payment market is simply an impossible task.
Things that can’t be done offline, Wal-Mart moved it to the line. Through cooperation with Buzzfeed, a news aggregator, Wal-Mart is able to get close to the online generation. When they watch a cooking video on BuzzFeed, sometimes just click on the icon to add all the ingredients to their Wal-Mart online shopping cart to increase conversion rates.
Overall, playing digitalization seems to be a bit difficult for Wal-Mart. Since 2019, it has not made any acquisitions in e-commerce, and has begun to completely rectify the core e-commerce business such as Jet.com. From the current situation of e-commerce profitability, Wal-Mart’s digital technology exploration has a long way to go.
Retailed repair field where the restart button is pressed
Amazon and Wal-Mart are old rivals who love each other and have been the target of Chinese retail companies. Despite today, the performance they have created has been difficult to speak with the “double eleven” national carnival. But thinking about its technological evolution path is not necessarily meaningless for the Chinese retail market in the big environment.
First of all, whether you can surpass each other is secondary. The most important thing is who will lay the “full retail” pattern of offline and online. At least on the “hard bones” of the online scene, the Amazon with “low-dimensional strike” has not been able to take advantage of Wal-Mart. It is precisely because of the relatively strong anti-stress ability of offline resources that Wal-Mart’s e-commerce business has experienced the experience of growing up after multiple channels. Wired magazines have reported that about 12% of Wal-Mart’s online orders. It is sent by consumers in the Wal-Mart store using APP, which can be freely converted online and offline stores. The elimination of this experience boundary is bringing unprecedented pressure to Amazon.
In addition, the balance between delivery efficiency and shopping experience is a question that needs to be rethought in the e-commerce war. Although Wal-Mart and Amazon’s time-to-poor delivery plan has not been able to directly show the impact on earnings and profits, but from the effect of the third quarter of this year, consumers will not be able to vote for Wal-Mart. Forced the industry to continue to speed up.
For example, Amazon paid billions of dollars for its “two-hour logistics”, and even led to the third quarter revenue and expenditure did not satisfy Wall Street analysts. With the formalization of China’s logistics industry and the disappearance of labor cost advantages, how to balance the logistics construction costs and freight losses in the future will inevitably become the “Sword of Damocles” hanging above the retail giants.
Of course, new value points are also emerging. For example, the mining of the membership system is becoming a key moat for e-commerce platforms. One of the big reasons why Amazon is supporting the rivalry of Wal-Mart is that its prime members bring incalculable value. In addition to being a water tester in new businesses such as unmanned stores, membership fee income, member-only services, etc., can offset the huge losses caused by investment, in exchange for valuable competition time. For retail platforms that want to replicate Amazon’s strengths, it’s getting harder to build their own membership systems from scratch. In contrast, local e-commerce, although there are many members and “ecology”, but it seems that can not constitute an absolute difference in user loyalty and experience.
From chasingIncrement to the consumption experience of the users of the stock, the chemical reaction of retail and technology is superimposing the business form that is most suitable for the current era.
Maybe from the moment you set foot on the retail track, no matter whether it is the Internet camp or the traditional entity, there is no choice but to go the same way.