Major changes in retailing

The first major change in the retail industry is marked by the birth of the modern significance of the department store. Academics call it "the first revolution of modern commerce", which is epoch-making. Although the innovative business practices of department stores at that time seem to be very common now, such as price indication and product return system; luxurious interior decoration, free access for customers; excellent service by staff and equal treatment for customers; huge shopping malls with a wide range of products on display, several product departments and integrated management. But these reforms were already a qualitative leap for traditional retailers at the time.

1. Fundamental changes in sales methods

Department stores are the first in the history of world business to implement new sales methods of modern mass sales organizations. Its new sales methods, in a nutshell:

(1), the customer can be carefree, free to go in and out of the store;

(2), the sale of goods to implement the "price tag", the goods have a price tag, to any customer to sell at the same price;

(3), Display a large number of products, so that customers can choose at will;

(4), the customer purchased goods, if not satisfied, can be returned.

These sales methods, although now seem to be a very common thing, but it is from the birth of the department store and its transformation of retail sales.

2. Fundamental changes in operation

One of the most important features of the department stores that appeared at that time was that they had a number of different departments, which were like a "group of stores" under one roof, i.e., they were divided into departments according to the categories of goods and the departments were responsible for organizing the purchasing and selling of goods. In addition, department stores have a large number of sales organizations with a focus on household goods and general management. They were organized by different products and different sales sections, and although the scale of each section was not large, the scale of the general management was very large compared to that of the previous grocery stores and specialty stores because it was gathered in a single management body. Therefore, the implementation of general management in department stores was also one of the fundamental changes in their adaptation to mass production and mass consumption.

3. Organizational and management of fundamental changes

Traditional urban retail stores and rural grocery stores, the owner not only personally business, but also responsible for their own people, money and material management. Fundamentally different from this, the department store because of the simultaneous operation of a number of series of goods, the enterprise scale is huge, and therefore its business activities are divided into relatively independent professional departments, the implementation of the division of labor and cooperation; while the management work is carried out at different levels, the enterprise has a unified plan and principles of organization and management, and then by a number of functions of the management department to implement. Therefore, the department store is in a capital plan and control, according to the commodity series implementation of sub-departmental, hierarchical organization and management. 1. Revolutionary Changes

Supermarkets marked the outbreak of a retail revolution, which had the following effects on the innovation and development of retailing and the changes in society as a whole:

(1), the popularity of open-shelf sales. Although open-shelf sales is not the first supermarket, but it is due to the super market and the development of the super market, the super market using the self-selected shopping, as an important means of competition not only impact on the original retail form, but also affect the new retail format, and later appeared in the discount stores, warehouse stores, convenience stores and so on have taken the open shelves of the self-selected or completely self-service mode.

(2), people's shopping time is greatly saved. With the increase in women's working hours, leisure time is reduced, people have not taken shopping as a form of leisure, shopping is more convenient, faster, supermarkets just to meet the new requirements of the people, the original decentralized operation of various types of commodities concentrated together, greatly saving the time of people's shopping, so that people can be used for travel, entertainment, fitness and other activities in the limited leisure time, to create a new modern Lifestyle. Supermarkets implement the unified settlement and related products display, also greatly saves people to buy goods and settlement time.

(3) The popularization of comfortable shopping environment. The neat, clean and comfortable shopping environment created by supermarkets has replaced the original dirty and noisy fresh food markets, making people believe that they can enjoy shopping when they buy any goods.

(4), promoting changes in commodity packaging. Open shelf self-selection forced manufacturers to carry out a new design of commodity packaging, packaging, logo and other aspects of competition, the emergence of a large and small packaging complete, beautiful decoration, logo highlights the many brands, which also makes the shopping malls look more neat, more beautiful, creating a good shopping environment.

2. Background

The emergence and development of supermarkets now seems to have its historical inevitability, the background is:

(1), the economic crisis is the fuse for the emergence of supermarkets. the economic crisis that swept the world in the 1930s has made the residents of the purchasing power of a serious shortage of retailers have gone out of business, a large number of shrinkage of production, store rents have dropped greatly, supermarkets to take advantage of these low rents and low cost, the market has been the most important factor in the development of supermarkets. Supermarkets made use of these unused buildings with low rents, adopted the self-service shopping method that saved labor costs and the business policy of selling at low margins to achieve low selling prices, and thus were welcomed by the vast number of consumers who were troubled by the economic crisis at that time.

(2) Lifestyle changes led to supermarkets. After the Second World War, more and more women took part in the work, people live, work faster, coupled with urban traffic congestion, the original retail store parking facilities backward, many consumers want to be able to go to a shopping mall, parking once, on the purchase of a week of food and daily necessities, supermarkets are adapted to the emergence of this requirement of consumers.

(3), technological advances have created conditions for supermarkets. The development of refrigeration equipment for the supermarket reserves a variety of fresh food to provide the necessary conditions for the perfection of packaging technology for the supermarket in the customer self-selection provides a great convenience; and later the popularization of the use of electronic technology in the commercial field, but also promote the use of supermarkets, electronic equipment, to improve the degree of mechanization of the sale of goods. In addition, the popularity of refrigerators and automobiles in Western households made it possible for consumers to make large purchases and long-distance purchases. Chain store is a product of modern large-scale industrial development, is compatible with the large-scale industrial production requirements. In essence, it is through the application of the basic principles of socialized mass production to the circulation field, to achieve the purpose of improving the coordinated operation ability and the scale of business efficiency. The basic characteristics of chain stores are manifested in four aspects:

1. Standardized management. In the chain store, each branch of the unified store name, use a unified logo, a unified decoration, in the staff dress, business hours, advertising, commodity prices are consistent, so that the overall image of the chain store standardization.

2. Specialized division of labor. Chain store headquarters functions as a chain, while the store's function is to sell. On the surface, this is not much different from a single store, but in fact there is a qualitative difference. The role of the headquarters is to study the business skills of the enterprise, and directly guide the operation of the branch, which enables the branch to get rid of the influence of the past management by experience, greatly improving the level of business management.

3. Centralization of goods. Chain headquarters centralized purchase of goods, large batch of goods, from manufacturers can get a lower purchase price, thus reducing the cost of goods, to achieve competitive price advantage. Because the stores are organized, therefore, in the purchase of goods to overcome the blindness, do not need to be too large inventory of goods, you can ensure that sales needs, inventory costs have been reduced. Each store is exclusively responsible for sales, there will be more time and means to organize sales promotion, thus accelerating the turnover of goods.

4. Simplified operations. Chain store operation process, workplace business activities as simple as possible to reduce the impact of experience factors on the operation, due to the chain system is huge, in the control of all aspects of a specific set of operating procedures, the requirements of streamlining the unnecessary process to achieve twice the result with half the effort. In the information age, the development of network technology has a great impact on the retail industry, and its influence is by no means less than the depth and breadth of the impact of the previous three technological innovations in production on the retail industry. Network technology has triggered the fourth change in the retail industry, and it has even changed the whole retail industry. This impact is specifically manifested in the following aspects:

1. Network technology breaks the boundaries of time and space in the retail market, store selection is no longer important. Store selection in the traditional retailer business, had occupied an extremely important position, some people even the traditional retail business success of the primary factors attributed to: "Place Place Place Place" (site, site, or site), because there is no flow of customers there is no flow of business, the amount of customer traffic, into the retail business The amount of customer traffic has become a crucial factor in retail operations. The reason for the rapid rise of chain stores is to break the spatial limitations of single stores and win a larger business circle. In the information age, network technology has broken through this geographical limitation, and any retailer can expand its target market to the whole country or even the whole world through certain efforts. The market has become truly internationalized, and the competition in retailing has become more intense. For traditional stores, the importance of geographic location will be greatly reduced, and in order to gain a foothold in the market, it is necessary to rely more on innovation in business management.

2. Changes in the way of selling and the rise of new types of business. The information age, people's shopping will undergo a huge change, consumers will evolve from the past "into the store shopping" to "sit home shopping", without leaving home, it will be easy to complete the online shopping process in the past to spend a lot of time and energy. Changes in the way of shopping will inevitably lead to changes in the way of store sales, a new form of retail organization - the emergence of the network store, which has an unparalleled superiority will become the mainstream mode of global business and the traditional stores with the business to start a full range of competition, and the traditional retailers in order to adapt to the new situation, but also the introduction of a new type of In order to adapt to the new situation, traditional retailers will also introduce new business models and new organizational forms to transform the traditional business model, try to carry out e-commerce on the Internet, combined with the strengths of the commercial flow of the network store and the strengths of the traditional business logistics integrated to play the greatest effect. The change of retail industry is no longer a small local innovation, but a real revolution.

3. Retailers' internal organization is facing restructuring. In the information age, the retail industry will not only appear a new type of retail organization - network stores, at the same time, the traditional retail organization will also face restructuring. Whether it is within the enterprise or between the enterprise and the outside world, network technology will replace part of the retailer's original channels and information sources, and have a significant impact on the retailer's business organization. These impacts include: the reduction of business personnel and sales staff, the reduction of the level of business organization, the increase in the magnitude of business management, the reduction in the number of retail stores, the prevalence of virtual stores and virtual departments and other internal and external virtual organizations. These impacts and changes have prompted retailers to realize the urgent need for organizational reengineering. In particular, the rise of the Internet has changed the way companies operate internally, as well as the way employees learn and grow, and the independence and professionalism of individual workers have been further enhanced. All these forced retailers to carry out organizational reengineering.

4. Operating expenses have dropped considerably and retail profits have been further reduced. In the information age, the networked operation of retailers is actually the process of formation of new trading tools and new trading methods. Retailers in the networked operation, internal and external transaction costs will fall, in terms of a retailer, if fully realized the networked operation, can save the costs include: internal contact and communication costs; enterprise labor cost costs; avoid a large number of goods to avoid the cost of capital occupation, storage costs and site costs; through the virtual store or virtual store street sales of store rental costs; through the Internet to promote the marketing costs and obtain consumer information survey costs. In addition, because of network technology has greatly overcome the barriers to information communication, people can roam the network, searching until the best price is displayed, and thus will make the market more competitive, resulting in retail profits will be further reduced.