What will the operation of physical stores be like in the next few years?

Since the emergence of e-commerce, there has been an irreconcilable contradiction between e-commerce economy and real economy, and the real economy has little advantage in the competition with e-commerce platforms.

First of all, Internet e-commerce online shopping is not limited by transaction time and place, and it is much more convenient for users to spend on e-commerce platforms, whether they choose goods or place orders. Purchase can be completed without leaving home, and logistics distribution can also be delivered to your door.

Secondly, e-commerce online shopping not only has no middlemen, but also greatly reduces the cost of rent, taxes and labor in physical stores, and there is no need to worry about economic turnover such as hoarding and pressing goods. These advantages enable e-commerce to win users at a lower price than physical stores, while the real economy can do nothing about customer loss.

In the cold winter of the real economy, real enterprises are facing difficulties in financing, high development costs, low spatial density of upgrading and difficulties in transformation and upgrading. Coupled with the impact of the epidemic, many entities have been hit hard and even unsustainable this year.

In addition, the lack of innovation is a long-standing industry malady in China. Some traditional enterprises failed to keep pace with the times, failed to innovate in time, and blindly relied on price wars to maintain the market. However, some startups blindly follow the trend and drift with the tide, lacking their own competitiveness.

At present, the lack of proper relaxation of policy credit is also one of the important reasons, which makes many people remember to start a business, but the loan is difficult, there is not enough start-up funds, and finally it is gone.

Capital from internet giants is pouring out things that are inconvenient to buy online. For example, it is obviously more appropriate to buy fresh fruits and vegetables in a physical store.

This is a shortcoming of e-commerce economy, and it is also an area where the real economy is relatively less affected by e-commerce.

But now several internet giants have driven small supermarkets and self-employed people away from the fresh fruit and vegetable market in the community through capital dumping, and then several giants have completed the segmentation and monopoly of the offline market of "community vegetable basket".

The economic volume of self-employed small supermarkets is far from that of giants. The giants have enough capital to support their former customers to compete for low prices, while the individual small merchants who are fighting for each other are unable to support themselves in this price war. If you don't cut prices, you can't win customers, and it's hard to make a profit by cutting prices. In the long run, the capital chain will break and you will have to withdraw from the market.

To sum up, by 202 1, the overall situation of the real economy is probably still not optimistic.

Although the country is now actively carrying out anti-monopoly rectification on major platforms, the real economy may gradually regain its vitality with the support of policies, but this will be a long process. In the short term, on the road of competition with the e-commerce economy, the real economy still has a bumpy road ahead.