E-commerce and Retail

Retail is a combination of information flow, logistics and capital flow. In the past, the advantages of e-commerce logistics were information flow and capital flow, and offline retail was the logistics advantage generated nearby. If e-commerce uses technology and big data to speed up logistics to approach or even exceed offline distribution, the logistics advantages of offline retail will disappear, and then the advantages of e-commerce information flow and capital flow will beat offline retail. Of course, this is based on the user's experience of the goods. If the user's experience of goods is mature, e-commerce has greater advantages; If you need to experience goods, such as a new technology and new species, the offline retail experience is still irreplaceable, which is also the main reason why e-commerce giants enter the offline.

E-commerce is inevitable, 1. Judging from the proportion of population structure, the labor cost will become more and more expensive in the future. With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, JD.COM has begun to use small robots to transport goods. 2. Fast e-commerce not only improves immediacy, but also improves experience. In the past, people were afraid to buy high-priced products on e-commerce, because they could only look at pictures and could not experience them, for fear that it would be inappropriate to buy them back. Now the logistics is fast, the order is placed at night, and it will be delivered early tomorrow morning. There is no reason to return it for 7 days, so you can experience it with confidence in the future. A large number of convenience stores and Tmall stores in 3.JD.COM have gone offline, which also improves the immediacy and experience.

As time goes by, e-commerce will gradually approach the proximity of offline retail, and the proximity of offline retail may no longer be an advantage, but should be more experiential.

However, within a certain range of the life circle, it is still the "near" victory of offline retail. Although "predictive shopping" is powerful, it still has the following limitations:

First, it is more suitable for people's regular consumption habits, such as buying rice and other daily consumption mentioned in the article, but it is impossible to solve irregular and temporary purchase ideas.

Second, the cost is high. Even if Ali can arrange the logistics in advance before double 1 1, the efficiency will be greatly improved, but it is impossible to be completely accurate. Compared with the mode of delivery after the user places an order, the cost is definitely higher.

Third, it is only suitable for specific scenes such as double 1 1, in exchange for user satisfaction.

To sum up, "predictive shopping" is a game of efficiency, customer satisfaction and cost, which is more suitable for users' regular consumption and specific scenarios such as double 1 1.