E-commerce in the retail industry

Application of E-commerce in Retail Industry

Mr. U Gapai, a famous economist, once said, "The greatest invention of the 20th century is the electronic computer, the greatest development of the electronic computer is the Internet, and the greatest application of the Internet is e-commerce." Since entering the 1990s, the vigorous rise of e-commerce has brought great impact to the traditional retail industry. How to truly penetrate e-commerce into the traditional retail industry to adapt to the rapid development of the market economy has become a very important and urgent task.

Wal-Mart is the world's leading retail chain, in the information age its online store business experience is particularly rich, strong capital, a complete range of goods. Wal-Mart's experience in the development of e-tailing business is very useful for other enterprises in e-tailing.

On the application of e-commerce in the retail industry, I would like to elaborate from the following aspects:

Overview of e-commerce in China's retail industry

Retail industry is an important way to realize the value and use of all kinds of commodities, and it is an important window reflecting the achievements of the construction of a country's material civilization and spiritual civilization, and it is also tasked with the important tasks of promoting production, prospering the market, and satisfying the people's needs in various aspects of their lives. It is an important window reflecting the achievements of a country's material civilization and spiritual civilization, and is responsible for promoting production, prospering the market and satisfying people's needs in various aspects of life. The development of China's retail enterprises is also the course of expanding the application of information technology in the retail industry. In just 20 years, China's retail information technology from scratch, from low level to high level, walked through the foreign nearly half a century to finish the road, has made the world remarkable achievements. At present, nearly 100 large-scale chain shopping malls in China have opened online chain shopping centers, and some large-scale supermarkets and department stores are also embarking on the construction of their own e-commerce systems and trading platforms. According to the relevant information in 2002, among the more than 1,700 e-commerce websites in the country, there are about 1,100 enterprises engaged in e-commerce in the retail industry. The hot-selling commodities online are mainly books, CD-ROMs and computer hardware, but communications and home appliances also showed great market potential in 2002. Online shopping and online ticket booking will be the consumer e-commerce market with greater potential.

But in general, China is still in a very immature stage, and the scale of transactions is far below the level of developed countries. Moreover, the proportion of Internet users participating in online transactions is also a certain distance compared with developed countries. An online questionnaire survey shows that only 40% of Internet users in China are satisfied with online transactions. While the global Internet users on the online transaction satisfaction is much higher, which fully demonstrates that China's retail e-commerce enterprises have to improve the quality of service.

II. Problems in the development of e-commerce in China's retail industry

1. Outdated concepts

Although various media in China have publicized and introduced e-commerce in great detail, many enterprises still have many cognitive problems in the process of implementation, for example, they think that e-commerce is just shopping on the Internet. As a result, most enterprises fail to fully utilize e-commerce to serve the needs of enterprise management and business as a way to reduce costs and enhance profitability.

In addition, the development of e-commerce in the retail industry also has a problem of how to look at the relationship with the traditional retail industry. The development of the traditional retail industry has experienced one or two hundred years, its mode of operation and business methods have been generally recognized and accepted by consumers, but the development of e-commerce only a few years, although the development is extremely rapid, but people's acceptance of it is still very limited, people's consumption habits are difficult to change in a short period of time, resulting in the vast majority of retailers are reluctant to try and contact this new way of doing business, and even The infiltration of e-commerce as a competitor and constantly excluded, making their own survival environment deteriorated.

2. System aging

Many retailers now have information systems that were established and implemented in previous years, which are no longer able to adapt to the requirements of modern business development, whether in terms of equipment, technological framework or management ideas, and which greatly limit the implementation of e-commerce in these enterprises. Compared with the emerging implementation of retail business of e-commerce enterprises, its low efficiency, high cost, in the complexity of the market competition, the vulnerability of the gradual emergence.

3. Closed information

Most of the enterprise information system is just a simple internal import - sales - inventory management system, coupled with the aging of the information system, these enterprises into an "information island", and the outside world (such as customers and suppliers) rarely have timely information exchange, so that the value of corporate information has not been fully exploited and utilized, losing a lot of outward expansion of business and attract more potential customers. The company's information value is not fully exploited and utilized, losing a lot of opportunities to expand business and attract more potential customers.

4. Distribution and Payment Lag

Distribution and payment are the same problems faced by most retail e-commerce companies. How to improve the distribution of time and cost control to find a balance between all the e-commerce site has always been plagued. Although there are individual enterprises to make consumers satisfied with the "one hour delivery" slogan, but whether from the distribution costs or the actual operation are very difficult; in addition, payment is also a problem, network security has been a sensitive issue, this problem is not resolved, will always bring psychological barriers to customers online payment.

5. Online sales of goods to be optimized

E-commerce can not be as inclusive as traditional retailing, such as storage conditions require high demand for items such as perishable food as well as higher-value items such as antiques, jewelry, it is not very suitable to get online sales. And in the use of more complex, product value and technology content is relatively high, more specialized products such as computers, office equipment, etc. is more suitable for online sales, for those daily necessities, people are already familiar with it, and the traditional sales network is very rich, obviously not suitable for online sales, at least the current stage is not suitable. Therefore, the commodity structure of online sales has to be further optimized.

Three, China's retail e-commerce development of the main ideas

The traditional retail industry should and must be combined with e-commerce, which is an inevitable trend in the development of the retail industry. The existence of these problems determines that promoting e-commerce in the domestic retail industry is a long and arduous process. Through the survey, I believe that the pragmatic and effective promotion of e-commerce in the retail industry requires every retail enterprise to face up to the current shortcomings, to find and utilize better opportunities for in-depth thinking and practical action. Specific ideas can have the following points:

1, change the concept, from the practical good enterprise information construction

To promote the development of e-commerce in the retail industry, first of all, we must change the concept. To completely change the traditional retail industry and the network is incompatible with the idea of thinking fully about how to use network technology to upgrade the traditional retail industry, in order to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and better serve customers; second, but also to change the "e-commerce is to establish a Web site," the simple idea of the enterprise's information technology, we must grasp the information construction in a practical way. If there is no perfect POS system, EOS ordering system, business management information system. The development of e-commerce in the retail industry is bound to be a formality.

2, keep pace, pay attention to the application of information systems

Currently China's enterprises are still very low degree of modernization, many enterprises have not yet established a truly advanced, scientific business philosophy, management system, computer management system. This has seriously affected the high-speed, large-scale development of the retail industry, therefore, we should quickly accelerate the modernization of enterprises, the application of high-tech means and information technology, the timely adoption of network technology, the application of the Internet, will provide new opportunities for Chinese retail enterprises. This new technology will create some opportunities for us to leapfrog traditional development. With the solution to realize low cost and high efficiency, China's retail enterprises will have to make great efforts to promote enterprise informationization, so as to lay a solid material foundation for the large-scale development of enterprises.

3, break the "island", the realization of information **** enjoy

As mentioned earlier, the current information systems of some enterprises due to self-enclosed, become a "silo", they contact with the supplier is mainly through the telephone line, fax, or e-mail. or e-mail. Although the telephone, fax and e-mail can realize the long-distance communication between business partners. However, the difficulty of information **** enjoyment and manual intervention make the whole process more mistakes and low efficiency. The openness, low cost and high efficiency of Internet technology make it possible to share information quickly and efficiently. For the upstream and downstream supply chain synergy provides the basis. But to achieve the information *** enjoyment and supply chain synergy, but also in the concept of recognizing the importance of collaborative competition, with the increasingly fierce competition, competition in the commercial field is no longer a store, a business alone, but the entire chain system, the entire supply chain competition, the entire supply chain synergistic operations, to achieve a rapid response to the needs of consumers in order to be invincible in the competition, while the information *** enjoyment is a prerequisite. At present, the information management system of most enterprises are each on their own, mainly used to deal with internal business process problems, less consideration for upstream and downstream customers to provide more services and information support. Therefore, there is an urgent need for retail enterprises to change their concepts and utilize the Internet to improve the business processes and communication between their purchasing and sales, settlement departments and suppliers and customers. For example, Womart is building a private trading network connected to its global supplier network is to establish its highly efficient supply chain.

4. Accelerate the restructuring and optimization of business processes based on information *** enjoy

Enterprises to let electronic information technology to support the business process, it should be the first to carry out the restructuring of business processes, not just let the information system to meet the needs of its existing processes, because the process is now used in the absence of information systems to support a strong information mode of behavior, according to this old process to construct the information system to meet the need. According to this old process to construct the information system, it may make the user feel redundant or not very useful, and sometimes feel that it increases the workload and reduces the efficiency. This is one of the main reasons why some Chinese retailers have invested more money, energy and time in the application of information systems, but not many of them are satisfied with the results. Therefore, before adopting information technology, it is necessary to carefully analyze how business processes should be changed and optimized on the basis of full information **** enjoyment, and then use information technology to support and achieve it. I believe: with the popularization of information technology and network, timely business process reorganization based on information *** enjoyment will make the business level and operational efficiency of enterprises greatly improved.

5. Make full use of information technology to improve business management

The development of e-commerce has prompted enterprises to fully realize that: in order to enhance the competitiveness of enterprises, we must make full use of information technology to improve the level of business management. For example, the use of e-commerce for centralized procurement management, which will inevitably improve the transparency of the procurement process, reduce procurement costs; the use of unified financial management software, direct control of all income and expenditure, which will inevitably reduce the risk of the enterprise's operations, improve economic efficiency. Information technology in business management activities in the level of application largely reflects the enterprise's ability to adapt to the market and the ability to compete, must not be taken lightly.

6. Make full use of customer relationship management, improve customer satisfaction

Traditional retail enterprises to carry out e-commerce business, they need to face the thousands of customers, to make them satisfied and become a loyal customer, it is necessary to implement customer relationship management. The purpose of customer relationship management is to maximize the return on customer relationships through the application of networks and computers, so that enterprises and customers *** with the benefits. The comprehensive application of customer relationship management in the retail industry, will provide an important basis for decision support and intelligent analysis of retail enterprises, can effectively analyze the return of corporate market activities, mining the market selling point of enterprise products, to determine the enterprise's main products, and further clarify the needs of customers, and provide them with more and better personalized service, maximize their loyalty to the enterprise.

In summary, the era of e-commerce, due to the deepening of market globalization, increasingly fierce competition, the scale of enterprises is becoming increasingly large, enterprises use e-commerce to develop their business has become the mainstream of today's socio-economic development. And in the past 10 years, retail e-commerce has been developed rapidly in the world, both to the traditional way of retail business operation has brought an immeasurable impact, but also for the new development of the traditional retail industry provides an important opportunity.

E-commerce is both urgent and difficult for Chinese retailers, but market competition is unstoppable, and Chinese retailers can only quickly improve their market competitiveness through the application of new information technology, thus promoting the rapid formation of new business models in China. This is also a development opportunity for China in the face of WTO. I believe that: with the prosperous development of the world economy, as a major pillar of e-commerce retail e-commerce, in the unstoppable economic trend, will be blossoming, competing for the situation.