Many retail companies ’decades of growth have ended with the new coronary pneumonia epidemic.

A luxury brand disclosed in its latest financial report that in the first quarter of this year, the business situation in China has become very critical. One-third of its stores were temporarily closed, and store traffic plummeted by 80%.

This is a dilemma commonly encountered by offline retail companies. The “Big Data Heat Map” released by Cheetah Mobile shows that the passenger traffic of the country’s business and supermarkets has dropped seriously, and the average daily rate of shopping malls has dropped by more than 60%. After the closure of Wuhan on January 23, the city’s shopping malls experienced a cliff-like decline, with a single-day decline of more than 45%.

Physical stores are the main source of income for many retail enterprises. Under the impact of the epidemic, they have lost the most direct contact with consumers Contact information. Whether it is the beauty industry, or catering, clothing retail, and supermarkets, every offline retail format has experienced a decline in performance due to the absence of passenger traffic.

This does not mean that consumers ’needs disappear, and their consumption habits are kept at home as much as possible And change. For the traditional retail industry, this is both a crisis and an opportunity.

Isolate and catalyze new consumption habits

During the epidemic, the trend of fresh and daily necessities shifting to online consumption is obvious.

Many people place orders to purchase meat, fruits and vegetables and daily necessities through personal WeChat and WeChat groups. According to “Liuzhou Daily”, a local supermarket has established 25 WeChat groups for this purpose, each group has 100-300 people, and each WeChat group has a supermarket staff member as the “head” to help consumers place orders. “Head of the group” releases several “welfare goods” and “special offers” every morning to drive everyone’s enthusiasm for purchase, and the average daily order quantity in the group can reach 200-300 orders.

Local people are enthusiastic about the consumption mode of placing orders through WeChat and delivering goods to merchants at home, and many clothing stores have also taken the opportunity to turn to the front. In the past, we recruited business through channels such as personal WeChat, WeChat group and WeChat public account to make up for the losses caused by the epidemic.

Several years ago, some chain supermarkets and brand stores have begun to lay out online, but many users are still used to online To buy. The sudden outbreak has acted as a catalyst, accelerating consumers’ shift to online.


Moreover, users placing orders through WeChat personal numbers, WeChat groups and applets have become a new trend that cannot be ignored. The China Economic and Social Data Research Center of Tsinghua University released the “2020 Epidemic Economic Warfare Epidemic” Report, showing that through the “shopping guide operation + community + small program live broadcast” model, the daily sales of merchant small programs in February this year increased by 1100 from December %. Among them, 26 applets sold over one million a day, and seven applets sold over 100 million a month.

Walmart China launched the “Walmart Dajia” applet nationwide in 2019, and there has been explosive growth this year. During the Spring Festival, the national order volume of “Walmart Dajia” increased by 15 times year-on-year.

Sephora WeChat Ecology makes up for the drop in offline passenger traffic, turning crisis into an opportunity. On the one hand, Sephora has developed the beauty master tool Smart BA Tool to empower beauty consultants to let them reach users through corporate WeChat, convey product information, and enable users to purchase in time; Provide one-to-one personalized services, spread knowledge and skills of beauty, and promptly recommend suitable products to consumers.

These online services not only save user time but also benefit, and many people will continue after the outbreak The habit of online consumption. The Nielsen survey shows that 89% of the respondents indicated that their willingness to purchase daily necessities and fresh food online will increase after the epidemic.

Traditional retail companies must invest more energy online.

New relationship between enterprises and users

The Wal-Mart-to-Home business that broke out during the epidemic has fully verified the essence of the retail omnichannel.

Walmart ’s digital transformation can be traced back to 2016. Wal-Mart has cooperated with multiple local e-commerce and Internet platforms to explore digital transformation Solution:

In 2016, Wal-Mart settled on the JD Daojia platform to provide online ordering services for customers within 3 kilometers of the store, with crowdsourcing Logistics company Dada-JD.com works together to solve “retail”The last mile” question. At the same time, the first official Wal-Mart flagship store and the official Wal-Mart flagship store were opened in JD Mall.

In 2018, Wal-Mart China launched the “Scan Margo” self-service cash register in the WeChat applet, so customers do n’t have to wait Checkout, you can pay on your mobile phone. The convenient payment method was quickly loved by customers, and “Sweeping Margo” became the first mini-program in the retailer’s ultra-industry with more than 10 million users in the first half of the year.

In May 2019, the Wal-Mart applet launched the “Walmart to Home” function, trying to use the applet to offline all products ” Moved to the “online store”.

During the epidemic period, the usage of the “Walmart Home” mini-program has grown rapidly, and the omni-channel ecosystem has achieved initial results . Recently, Chen Zhiyu, senior vice president of Wal-Mart China, talked about the revelation gained through digital exploration at the WeChat roundtable initiated by WeChat and jointly launched by the world ’s top companies and the world ’s top business schools: The trading relationship, the user came today, but we do not know if there will be another one. The digital transformation of the retail industry is to identify users and establish a long-term relationship with users. He can actively contact him when he is not shopping, not just waiting for him in the store.

A few days ago, the Wal-Mart applet has more than 65 million registrationsUsers, and continue to enrich the precise reach and personalized marketing functions of small programs, such as the “WOW Lehui” point redemption plan, allowing consumers to use the small program, regardless of online or offline scenarios, at the right price Enjoy the right products and convenience.

WeChat Roundtable has recently connected multiple industry and academics online

Most offline retail companies realized during the outbreak that it was not enough to wait for users in stores, because users Because isolation cannot come, they will not be able to reach it. In the past, the sales volume of retail companies was largely determined by the number of people. The higher the number of people, the better the sales. Therefore, the location of stores is a big deal. But this kind of business established in the high traffic area does not know who the user is. Even though many retail companies will understand the user information through a questionnaire survey, they cannot accurately grasp the real portrait of the user, let alone individual users.

Retail companies can establish contact with users online, but there are also “pits”. Geng Zhijun, vice president of Tencent’s WeChat business group, said at the WeChat roundtable that retail companies need to understand the difference between centralized traffic distribution and private domain traffic to establish user loyalty.

E-commerce platform or OTA platform is a centralized traffic distribution platform, and the traffic is randomly distributed to different users. In the era of centralized traffic, enterprises are actually driving rapid sales Fight the price war and seize users through large-scale promotional activities and lower prices.

The emergence of WeChat public accounts, applets and other products has provided the possibility for enterprises to establish their own user groups. This part of traffic is called private domain traffic in the industry. In the era of private domain traffic, the user groups built by enterprises themselves have certain loyalty to the brand, so they can do more differentiated operations for these users without worrying about the loss of users due to force majeure factors such as epidemics. This long-term connection with users represents a new relationship between enterprises and users in the digital age.

The epidemic has forced companies to look for ways to establish new connections with users, which will also prompt them to think What kind of relationship does the user establish and maintain. In the process of recovery after the epidemic, it is foreseeable that more companies in the retail industry will be interested in private domain traffic. They hope to establish their own user groups through the ability to connect to WeChat through applets, WeChat public accounts, and enterprise WeChat. It is very effective to deal with the next sudden crisis.

The value of WeChat “connection”

There are also some retail companies exploring digital transformationAsked for a new “pay as shopping guide” game.

Some retail companies add the contact information of the shopping guide to the successful payment page. Users can add shopping guide after using WeChat payment WeChat. The results of the experiment show that users have a very high chance of adding shopping guide WeChat. This new gameplay brings new possibilities to online sales.

This sales method was unthinkable before, but after users turned more consumption online, WeChat Ecology New explosive power is present in retail. The shopping guide’s personal WeChat, friends circle, corporate WeChat, video number, as well as corporate WeChat public number and applet have great use space.

This new sales model is called “multi-scenario shopping” in the industry. And the connectivity of WeChat also shows its commercial value in multi-scenes shopping:

User traffic is the cornerstone of commercialization, and WeChat public accounts, applets, and video numbers are merchants ’contacts and Scenarios for maintaining user relationships, and mini-programs are also tools to enhance the trading experience and solve the trust problem of merchants. The live broadcast of mini-programs in the public beta stage has also created a sales scenario with strong social attributes and high conversion efficiency for merchants. “Enjoy card” and other products help merchants lower the threshold for effective new promotion and repurchase.

Multi-scenario shopping makes users ’consumption decisions more fragmented and personalized-users are likely to see a circle of friends 2. Seeing a push from a public account or seeing a live broadcast of an applet and purchasing behavior.

This puts forward higher requirements for retail enterprises in the process of digital transformation: Enterprises need online virtual Expand the sales boundary in the space, reshape the original sales model, and break the ceiling of sales in the offline physical space; in this process, the shopping guide also needs a better storytelling ability to let users quickly understand the highlights of the product.

What new opportunities will WeChat Ecology bring to the digitalization of retail enterprises? At the WeChat round table, Geng Zhijun, Vice President of Tencent WeChat Business Group, Chen Bing, General Manager of LVMH-Sephora China, Chen Zhiyu, Senior Vice President of Wal-Mart China, Gong Yan, Professor of Entrepreneurship Management Practice at China Europe International Business School, and “Fortune” (Chinese version) Senior Editor Yang Anqi also discussed this in depth.

From the exploration of Sephora China and Wal-Mart China during the epidemic, enterprises with higher digital capabilities will obtain higher“ anti-epidemic capacity ”. It is foreseeable that digital capabilities will be improved for a long period of time Will become a required course for global retail companies.

The first time wechat officials, industry and academia through the WeChat roundtable also reflected that WeChat hopes to use the “first mover” To promote the continuous innovation attitude of different participants in the ecosystem. The experience and insights from these big coffee companies in digital transformation will not only provide more companies in transition with reference to future trends and innovative solutions, but also export China to companies in other global markets that are accelerating digital transformation. experience.

For small and medium retailers, they may not be able to say too much theoretical basis, but they can use these digital “first movers” The gameplay in WeChat Ecology was inspired and created a lot of grounded gameplay. For example, after the epidemic, some chain cake brand stores began to promote their stores’ WeChat public accounts, paying more attention to cakes worth more than a dozen dollars. On the WeChat public account, users can directly place orders to purchase goods from this store. In this way, stores can provide users with more localized and more efficient services.

The exploration of digitalization of these small and medium-sized shops will bring a new wave of digitalization to the retail industry.

Summary

The development of technology has changed the business environment and consumer habits.

In the future, users ’shopping behavior will become more and more personalized and fragmented Combined with higher requirements, it also puts forward new requirements for marketing. In the digitalization process of traditional retail, it is necessary to accurately reach users, meet the individual needs of different users, and improve service capabilities.

Geng Zhijun summarized the transformation that must be completed in the process of digitalization of retail enterprises from four aspects on the WeChat round table:

  • The transformation of the field. Traditional clothing, cosmetics stores and supermarkets have hundreds or even tens of thousands of products. After digital transformation, users must quickly realize what they want to buy, either because of price consumption or because of the goods Story consumption, at least to give users the ability to quickly retrieve the direction of some products.


  • transformation of people. Shopping guides and waiters need to master new skills in online services and be able to open up new sales scenarios and spaces.


  • Renovation of goods. Offline products need to be SKU-based, making product retrieval easier and product information more convenient to transmit.


  • Reformation of user data. Be able to find the user ’s pain points, give the user a better shopping experience, shorten their decision-making process, and even guess what the user wants to buy.

    In the transformation of traditional retail industry, most companies have completed the transformation of goods in the past few years, Wal-Mart, During the epidemic, large retail companies such as Sephora have explored plans to transform the field and people. These plans will provide reference for the digital transformation of more companies.

    The user group is on WeChat, and then retail companies can provide a better experience and personality based on continuous understanding of users Higher degree of service.

    Technology has brought about disruptive changes in sales scenarios, and it has also brought about changes in the relationship between retail enterprises and users. In the past, the seller’s market became a strong buyer’s market, and the closer the buyer was to the buyer, the more likely he was to obtain higher returns.

    It is foreseeable that the changes brought by the epidemic will not disappear after the epidemic is over, and the retail industry will be reshaped in the next few years .