Published ｜ Tiger Sniff Business Group

Author ｜ Cuba Libre

Title map | IC photo

Walmart China changed coaches again. Today, Wal-Mart China announced the latest appointment: from May 8, Zhu Xiaojing, the former president of New Zealand Fonterra Group Greater China, will be airborne to Wal-Mart as President and CEO of Wal-Mart China, while Chen Wenyuan, the current president and CEO of Wal-Mart China, said Due to personal family reasons, will leave Wal-Mart.

This “female general” is Wal-Mart’s another coaching change in three years, and the background is that Wal-Mart is in a crucial moment in the second half of Chinese retail.

The arrival of the “local” president

It can be said that the new president of Wal-Mart China is a “long” multinational business executive in the “native” retail world. Before joining Wal-Mart, Zhu Xiaojing was the president of New Zealand Fonterra Group ’s Greater China region and was fully responsible for Fonterra’s consumer brands, catering services, strategic customers and ranch business in Mainland China, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Taiwan.

Zhu Xiaojing

Yue Mingde, Executive Vice President of Wal-Mart Global, CEO of Wal-Mart Global Sourcing and Asia (Dirk Van den Berghe) in his evaluation Writes: “Zhu Xiaojing’sThe overall business development has made outstanding contributions, through channel reforms, embracing digitalization, continuous innovation and other measures to upgrade the brand, and its products have also steadily ranked first in market share in multiple categories. In addition, she also led Fonterra to become the best employer brand, which is very consistent with Wal-Mart’s values. ”

In Yue Mingde ’s mouth, the most important reason for appointment is: “China ’s retail industry is undergoing disruptive changes, and one has” consumer-centric “as its core value concept, and has a deep understanding of the company ’s digital operations and is rich in The innovative spirit of the CEO, on the basis of Chen Wenyuan’s outstanding achievements in the past few years, continues to lead Wal-Mart China to create good results, which is very important to us. “

Walmart China, which Zhu Xiaojing is about to take over, has opened more than 400 stores in more than 170 cities, and has prepared a small expansion plan. At the end of last year, Wal-Mart announced that it would add 500 stores and cloud warehouses in China in the next 5 to 7 years, including Wal-Mart hypermarkets, community stores, and Sam ’s member stores, and it would also transform 50% of existing stores.

However, in today’s Chinese retail market, Wal-Mart coming in as a “teacher” is going through the most important period of strategic transformation. On the one hand, Wal-Mart needs to face the omnichannel challenge of the local retail market, on the other hand, it must also adapt to the more diversified development of the Chinese market.

At the same time, local retail companies are actively forming strategic alliances with Internet companies, making China ’s retail industry perhaps the world ’s most closely integrated market with Internet technology. Internet companies hold high the banner of digitalization and hope to find them in the physical retail world. New source of power.

So, Zhu Xiaojing’s word about “digitalization” in Fonterra’s background actually shows the new proposition that Wal-Mart is facing now-with the “liquidation” of foreign retail in China, as well as omni-channel and digitalization in retail With the deepening of the dominant position in China, Wal-Mart faces a more tense “localization” situation.

Urgent second half battle

With the opening of the merger of Metro and Wumart, the story of foreign-funded retail draws a periodical period, but this does not mean the end of the competitive situation in the supermarket.

Walmart is still far from being able to recuperate. In the increasingly severe retail competition environment, the speed of layout of all channels is the key to deciding who can stay in the second half of retail. Walmart, which once faced fierce competition and the threat of e-commerce, now regards omnichannel as one of its most important solutions in China.

In this year 1In March, Wal-Mart announced that its omni-channel online and offline sales scale maintained a three-digit growth, with more than 50 million digital customers. In Chen Wenyuan’s mouth, this is already Wal-Mart’s best performance in China in the past five years: “According to the latest fiscal quarter, which is the third quarter of 2019 financial report, Wal-Mart achieved the best performance in the Chinese market in five years. An increase of 6.3% and a comparable sales increase of 3.7%. Due to the growth of fresh food and omni-channel sales, sales at Sam ’s member stores reached comparable double-digit growth. ”

There are also official data showing that as of the end of 2019, the penetration rate of outstanding members has reached 20% in some cities; in the next three years, Wal-Mart said that it will establish digital links with 80% of customers and members. The proportion of members will reach one-third.

Walmart has set a goal of membership growth on its own track. However, Putting this sales in the overall retail omni-channel development speed in China, Sam ’s expansion is far from enough. Official information shows that in terms of store layout, Sam’s member stores currently open 26 stores in China, and the number of stores in 2018 was 23, that is to say, Wal-Mart only opened three Sam’s member stores in 2019.

At the same time, Hema Xiansheng, which was also initially positioned as a new retailer, opened its stores much faster in 2019. In the past month, Hema has opened in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Changsha, Hangzhou and other places. 10 stores. On the other side, Costco, which has the same membership system, is also accelerating the opening of its second and third stores. Just in April, the third Costco in mainland China has officially settled in Suzhou.

At the same time, Wal-Mart ’s small-scale “community store”, which began to test water in 2018, has become the focus of almost all retail brands, including Yonghui, which has been doing business since 2018. Hui mini, the number has exceeded 500.

Besides Yonghui, and Suning, who has annexed Carrefour, has also become one of the strongest opponents in the fierce war that Wal-Mart will face in every aspect.

“In the next five years, in the first to third-tier markets, we have set the development goal of opening 300 Carrefour stores, and strive to achieve catch-up with Wal-Mart.” In September last year, Zhang, chairman of Suning Holdings Group, which acquired Carrefour soon In the Near East, a small goal to overtake Wal-Mart was proposed early in the morning.

Now, Zhang Jindong seems to be getting closer and closer to his wishes. Tiger Sniff in “ Yonghui surpasses Wal-Mart, andRT-Mart’s Decisive Battle at the Top of Billion Billion wrote that Yonghui ’s 2018 financial report shows, “According to Euromonitor ’s ranking of the mainland China ’s market share, the company currently ranks No. 1 behind Sun Art Retail, China Resources, and Wal-Mart. Four, but the growth rate is the fastest among all the companies on the list. “By 2019,” It is expected that the company will rank third in the fast-moving consumer chain after China Resources and Gaoxin Retail in 2019, and the growth rate is still one of the fastest. . “

“This means that Yonghui Supermarket has surpassed Wal-Mart in terms of market share in the supermarket format, ranking among the top three fast-moving retail retailers. In terms of a single brand, the future of China ’s supermarket retail industry will be in the top Between Hui and RT-Mart. ”

As one of the educators who used to be the retailer of Chinese supermarkets, Wal-Mart will not be without crisis awareness. With omnichannel, digital and other internal upgrades and external competition, the most important task of “Female One” is to prevent Wal-Mart from losing its name in the second half of the competition.