Offline business is no longer a supporting role in the “Double Eleven”.

Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “deeply” (ID: deep -echo), the author applies for business.

Key points:

  • In the past 11 years, offline business has gone through the process of resisting to embracing.

  • The offline line has also become the new increment of “Double Eleven”.

  • In the process of online digital upgrade, there will be more new games and opportunities.

The 11-year change of “Double Eleven” brought a carnival and climax to the e-commerce platform.

But today’s “Double Eleven” has already exceeded the scope of the “E-commerce” carnival promotion – in the past few years, offline business has also experienced a boycott of “Double Eleven”. Follow the “double eleven”, and then return to the focus of the battlefield.

In addition to Alibaba, which started to use offline red packets and other means to drive offline consumption as early as 2016, Suning has played the “double eleven” scene retail concept this year, Tencent Smart retail has also been on the line, “shopping around”, have added to the line of business.

Besides “Double Eleven”, offline traffic has become the new favorite of Internet companies in the past two years. Jingdong, Tmall International, NetEase, and Vipshop have tried the waterline. Down the store, and three online squirrels, inside and outside online brands have also extended their tentacles to the offline. At the same time, the digital transformation and upgrading of offline retailing is also using information tools to expand the service radius of offline businesses and business boundaries.

The offline business is evolving into a new species. The “Double Eleven” that originally belonged to the e-commerce carnival is a magnifying glass, allowing us to take a closer look at the new form of offline commercialization in digital upgrades.

From passive acceptance to active attack, offline business participation

The entire development history of “Double Eleven” is basically in sync with the development and expansion of the e-commerce platform in China. In 2009, the original intention of the Ali team to set up the “Double Eleven” was to create a large-scale promotion similar to the “Black Five” form of the American Thanksgiving Day, so that people can remember Taobao Mall. At the beginning of the “Double Eleven”, it was only a small and confusing e-commerce platform at that time. The first “Double Eleven” organized by Taobao only had 27 merchants to participate. In the category, no merchants were willing to participate at the beginning. Unexpectedly, Taobao Mall broke through 52 million yuan in the first “Double Eleven” day trading volume, which was 10 times of the daily trading volume at that time. The “Double Eleven” was also a hit.

Tmall” Double Eleven” sales over the years

Subsequently, Jingdong, Dangdang, Suning Tesco and other e-commerce platforms have joined the “Double Eleven” battle, and “Double Eleven” has become the key time node for the annual release of domestic e-commerce platform. An important means of rapid penetration of business penetration in the country.

Compared with the rise of the “Double Eleven” data section and the rapid rise of the domestic e-commerce platform, the offline retail experience in the “Double Eleven” is much more twisted and twisted: from the initiative Resisting to block the “Double Eleven”, and then the market share was eroded and passively followed up, and finally to actively participate, become an irreplaceable scene in the “Double Eleven”, the “double eleven” course of offline business can be described as twists and turns.

As early as the “double eleven” to the fifth year, the attitude of the offline business to the “double eleven” began to be significantly loose.

The most typical is the strategic cooperation between Intime and Tmall in 2013: Intime’s 35 physical stores collectively participate in the “Double Eleven”, and the main stores even set up the Tmall Yintai store commodity area, which can be experienced offline. Online shopping. Similarly, Beijing Chaoyang Joy City has taken the initiative to become a “double eleven” “fitting room”: the entire merchant will open the number of the goods to consumers, consumers can copy and place orders online.

Although there are still traditional merchants who have publicly boycotted the Double Eleven in this period, it is forbidden for its merchants to “transfer the business of the store to another place through the e-commerce mobile POS”, but overall, the offline business pair “ The winds of the Double Eleven have begun to change.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, China’s online retail sales in 2013 was 1.9 trillion yuan, only 212,000 nationwide.Less than one-tenth of the retail sales of billions of goods. The offline “double eleven” in the offline business really means that the “Double Eleven” has begun to have the same strength as the “Black Five” and other national promotion and carnival activities.

2015 is another key point. This year, the concept of smart retail was proposed. At the same time, in the process of rapid increase in mobile payment penetration, offline merchants gradually got the hardware conditions on the line, and further from the passive partner in the “Double Eleven”. It became the real participant of the “Double Eleven”. When “Double Eleven” became an IP with quite high self-owned traffic, various Internet giants began to package their business strategies with “Double Eleven”.

For example, WeChat pays for the “Double Eleven” offline consumer discount, and starts to push its own smart retail solution. The offline gameplay that we are familiar with is gradually enriched on this node. stand up.

The 2015 “Double Eleven” WeChat payment poster, has 100,000 merchants participating in the event

In 2016, the promotion of physical retail transformation has become a policy promoted at the national level. The participation of offline merchants in the “Double Eleven” has naturally become a regular play. More representative is Uniqlo, and began to support offline single-line offline stores.

At that time, Ma Yun had already given a prediction on the combination of online and offline formats: “The pure e-commerce has not followed the offline cooperation, but the same, if the line still does not embrace the Internet. This will go short, so we have to remind everyone that the sky will change soon.”

The pure e-commerce platform has indeed started to enter offline business. For example, Jingdong has already begun to set up offline stores in 2016, including Jingdong specialty store, which is mainly engaged in mobile phones, computers, digital and creative goods, Jingdong home appliance store, which cooperates with Midea, Haier, Gree and other home appliance brands, and Jingdong digital computer monopoly. shop. Tmall International and Netease have chosen to test their offline experience stores in 2018.

In July of this year, Vipshop, which has been positioned as “Online Outlets”, announced that it will acquire a 100% stake in the offline outlet brand, Shanshan Commercial, for 2.9 billion yuan. The line went offline.

Therefore, this year’s “Double Eleven” online and offline integration has become more and more true: the brand’s offline stores are not just one of the “Double Eleven” participants.There are more roles that cannot be replaced by online channels. Whether it is the presence of pre-positions in the offline store online, the burden of overall e-commerce logistics is shared, or offline stores as users and brands. The contact points provide users with services such as pre-experience and post-sales services. The added advantages of offline consumption to online consumption have become more and more obvious, and it has become one of the new offensive and defensive focus of the Internet giant.

Suning is a typical example of the advantages of wired resources. Suning began to play the market positioning of “1 hour scene life circle” this year, and used the advantages of offline stores to cover 300 urban communities and over 10,000. Based on this, we started to push the “Lightning Distribution” of 1km and 30 minutes of the whole category, as well as the “Lightning of 24 Hours” for the four- to six-line urban and county towns and the townships and rural areas under its jurisdiction. Township.”

Tencent, which was originally far away from e-commerce, Also began to enter through the smart retail. WeChat pays for the wisdom of life in November, buying festivals, through offline scanning code coupons, online payment of courtesy, and nearby coupons, etc., to help China Resources, Yonghui, Carrefour, Wal-Mart and other retail channels to carry out “double ten In the promotion of “one”, the media reported that the registration amount of the pure fast-eliminating brand was nearly 3 billion yuan.

In addition, Tencent has recently released a retail service collection and recommendation platform “Tencent Smart Retail Applet”. This small program can recommend the products of the surrounding brand applet based on the geographical location. Users can browse the post-store experience and place an order, which is equivalent to the store diversion. At the same time, the store guide can also publish content recommendations to surrounding users. Communicate with users. This small program, also known as “walk around”, is equivalent to a collection of surrounding products in the WeChat ecosystem. Although still in the regional test, but in For the ability of the offline store to divert, the future should not be underestimated.

The turn of these Internet giants is an indication of the offline business that had been in the “double eleven”, and has become a new advantage resource after adjusting and transforming again and again.

The original brand under the pure line is getting closer to the online this year. For example, Mengjie Home Textiles, through WeChat payment and small programs, through the online purchase of offline pick-up methods, led to the store, and joint sales, up to 100,000 joint sales. At the same time, choose the group’s value-for-money and cost-effective drainage, and through the store to raise the additional activity rights, attract a large number of consumers to the store: Take Changsha Xiangfu Road as an example, in the double elevenDuring the event, the number of single-store activities reached nearly 60,000, and the number of people who went to the store on the 13th was 800, with a conversion rate of 43%. After the online and offline integration of the “Double Eleven”, the overall sales growth exceeded 10%.

In the eleventh year of the Double Eleven, there is no border between the online and offline.

Digitalization of offline ecosystems

The process of offline business from passive participation in the double eleven to becoming a ring that cannot be replaced is also the process of continuous evolution of offline business. In the process of online consumer experience gradually integrating with online consumption, the changes brought about by the overall digital transformation and upgrading of offline ecology may have exceeded many people’s perceptions.

In particular, in terms of product experience, instant arrival, and more complete goods, the advantages of offline are becoming more and more obvious. The most typical is the emergence of community e-commerce: using the soil of the WeChat community, community group purchase can be said to be through the online order, the offline community to pick up the goods, combined with the advantages of both sides, both use The service radius advantage of offline business has improved the efficiency of information transmission through online communities, and fully enabled the industry to see the value of offline.

In this year’s “Double Eleven”, you can also see the informatization upgrade of offline business from the statistical data of various tool products. The “2019 Small Program “Buy and Buy” report published by WeChat shows that from 11.1 to 11.11, the average daily visitor number of three vertical business small programs of convenience stores, supermarkets, and fresh fruits and vegetables has nearly doubled from last year. Good shop, prosperous preference, convenience bee, daily excellent, and Tianhong home to retailers with small programs, visits and transaction volume increased significantly, of which daily trading volume of small and small programs increased by 343% compared with the same period last year.

This phenomenon also illustrates the second change:Digital upgrades make digital tools easier and more complete, making up for the disadvantages of offline. The biggest problem with the original line is that consumers who go to the store to eat are difficult to track. It is difficult for merchants to understand consumers, let alone based on consumer portraits. More personalized operations.

But with the digital upgrade of the overall retail industry, more and more people are looking at how to transform offline businesses and the opportunities that exist in them, especially on mobile In the process of the Internet moving from C to B, solving the digital business problem of the merchant has become the most important incremental space for many manufacturers and service providers within the ecology.

A more obvious signal is that starting from the WeChat applet, all the super apps are starting to play.Create a small program tool and try to make the digital packaging of offline merchants lighter. This year, Tencent’s smart retail small program has begun to enter the WeChat payment nine-square grid in different regions, and its status is becoming more and more important. At the recent conference of service providers, Alipay emphasized that Ali is trying to use the “small program + IoT + membership card voucher marketing” approach to provide infrastructure support for the service providers in the ecosystem.

At the same time, offline merchants are actively exploring more ways to play and access through the ecological capabilities of WeChat and other super apps.

For example, online payment and offline write-off through payment tools are a common way of playing this year. For example, in the past two years, the famous and famous products have made large-scale and large-scale promotion in the period of 11.1 to 11.11 during the period of “small program receipt + offline write-off”.

Famous products online and offline play It can be said that there are both combinations and focuses: online coupons, free coupons, and expiration of funds are returned. The discount is on the designated goods or categories, while the offline is the main discount. Through the small program online to receive coupons, offline consumption, the total amount of the under-store sales of Mingchuang Premium Products during the period 11.1-11.11 increased by 181.75% compared with last year. By linking the link to the applet, you can also convert the brand’s offline traffic into digital membership, resulting in accumulation, which ultimately leads to consumer user insight.

In addition, shopping guides and customer service have become the norm by creating social traffic for themselves and brands through social tools such as WeChat. Under this operation, the service radius, service bandwidth and service period of the merchant have been expanded to serve more users, and each user can get longer and more comprehensive services.

With the development of the Internet of Things, combined with various IoT tools, merchants can get more and more information in all dimensions of users and products. For example, the store traffic heat map has gradually become a common tool for digital retail stores, which can help merchants to make more accurate predictions, optimize the way of display in the store, and improve the efficiency of the entire commodity circulation link.