The strategic layout has reached a high level, can the efficiency of resource use still be a battle?
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “Bay Area box CLUB” , Author: zgcgdg.
Original CLUB in the Bay Area
Author XIAOXI
Edit | GUOGUO
Recently, Amazon ’s offline retail trials have a new twist.
A week after the U.S. Capitol Hill community launched the latest version of Amazon Go Grocery, the latest pop-up store Pop Up opened in Seattle’s newest high-rise office building re-Invent. Next to it is Amazon’s 4-star, another offline retail format.
and Amazon Go Grocery main unmanned The retail, buy-and-go experience Unlike Pop Up, there are no high-end cameras. Customers have only two options when checking out, either by scanning the QR code with the Amazon app or paying with a traditional cash register.
So far, if we add Amazon’s offline retail games together, there are currently as many as six. They are: Amazon Go, Amazon Go Grocery, Amazon Books, Amazon 4-star, Amazon Pop Up, Whole Foods, etc.
In the face of Amazon’s growing and dazzling variety of physical stores, the problem comes:
How do we understand the variety of AmazonOffline store? What are the characteristics of the overall thinking? How did Amazon’s old rival Wal-Mart deal with these six weapons?
Six formats and six scenarios
First, let’s compare what Amazon wants to do through the six offline formats.
Details:
Pop up
According to Amazon’s official statement, Amazon Pop Up was created to bring the hottest and most exciting products of millions of products on Amazon’s website to large shopping malls across the United States.
At present, this format has two major characteristics.
One is the so-called “pop-up shopping experience”, which is a pop-up store in the mall.
As a pop-up store, constant change and constant change are the main features. In addition to products that reflect consumer trends, Amazon will also include less-common interactive displays in traditional malls.
But on the other hand, because it is a flash, it is destined not to do too much hardware modification on the shopping scene like Amazon Go Grocery, which is the limitation.
Second, this format will be based on a certain theme in the display of products and will be updated regularly.
For example, the newly opened in Seattle, the theme is “everything is asleep-from A to Zzz”. Based on this theme, the operations manager chose a variety of Amazon Basics branded bedding, including sheets, quilts, blankets and bedroom storage.
Of course there are various Amazon digital devices, including Echo smart speakers and the latest Fire TV Stick and Fire tablets. After customers are optimistic about these things, they can choose to place orders online.
At other stores, there are themes like celebrating Barbie’s 50th anniversary, Marvel’s Avengers, and more.
In this storefront, digital price tags on the shelves can be automatically updated with star ratings and text reviews from Amazon customers. Of course, a similar 20% discount is also required.
In terms of distribution, in addition to this Seattle store, it currently has stores in five other states, including California, Colorado, and Illinois.
The previous development of the Popup store has not been smooth.
After this format was launched, nearly 90 stores were opened in shopping malls across the United States, but it was later owned by Amazon.shut down. Later, Amazon restarted this business, but it was once called Amazon Presented, and the name Pop Up was not re-enabled until the end of last year.
Amazon Books
Book categories are where Amazon started.
From the perspective of SKU, this store mainly sells selected books and related electronic equipment, toys and games. Amazon claims that all products in the bookstore are rated 4 stars or more by customers, or are bestsellers or new products.
The front and back of this format are fully integrated with data and experiences from Amazon Online.
For example, at the scene, there are special settings on the scene to highlight the popular content that everyone is reading, as well as the reader’s own favorite content to help customers discover new books they love.
In order to provide a better front-end experience, Amazon is a “human flesh + data” configuration in the background.
Amazon has a team of curators dedicated to researching various data on people’s reading behavior, including customer ratings, reviews, pre-sale data, sales, and popularity in readers such as Good reads, and Kindle reading Data, and then combine their expertise to select book products.
Amazon 4-star
As the name implies, all products in the Amazon 4-star store are selected products rated 4 stars and above, and Amazon claims to be the best-selling trend product. Including consumer electronics, toys, games, books, household items, etc.
In this format, Amazon’s thinking is to encourage users to explore further. Unlike Amazon Go and Amazon Go Grocery’s “buy quickly, buy quickly,” scenes, they are willing to satisfy customers for a good stroll demand.
In terms of store layout, Amazon says that, like Amazon Books, Amazon 4-star is also designed around customer discovery.
Basically, you can think of Amazon 4-star as an extension of the offline scenario of Amazon e-commerce. All product groups are the same as those seen online, and customers will be very familiar with them, including reviews, related recommendations, and so on.
Regarding the selection of products, some people have also commented that they saw some products with a rating lower than 4 stars. In this regard, Amazon said that they do not actually look at the ratings on the selection. all.
Amazon Go and AmazonGo Grocery
It can be seen from the naming that these two formats mainly meet the needs of fast shopping. Currently, Amazon Go and Amazon Go Grocery both offer Just Walk Out shopping experience.
The background of these two formats combines computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning.
At Wal-Mart, under the strong pressure of Amazon, it should be said that in the past few years, profit margins have been sacrificed to maintain growth.
According to Wal-Mart’s fourth-quarter 2019 financial report, its sales increased by 2.1% to $ 141.7 billion, and annual revenue increased by 1.9% to $ 542 billion. Comparable sales increased by 1.9%. Among them, e-commerce sales increased by 35%, accounting for about 8% of total sales (Walmart US). The growth rate is okay, but the total is obviously not large enough. And, despite revenue growth, operating profit for the year fell 6% to $ 20.6 billion, and operating profit for the fourth quarter fell 12%. The operating profit rate for the full year dropped from 4.3% in 2018 to 3.9%, which is still a big drop compared with the historical record of 5-6%.
Specifically to the grocery market, the total size of the US market is about 700-800 billion US dollars.
If you add online and offline, researchers estimate that Amazon made $ 20 billion in grocery revenue last year. Wal-Mart estimates that it generated $ 270 billion in revenue.
Simply looking at online business, research company eMark