What is the difference between O2O and traditional e-commerce?

Distinguish between O2O and e-commerce from the following aspects:

1) The evaluation methods are different.

As we all know, e-commerce measures the effect by sales or transaction scale; For example, Ali announced that the transaction volume of Taobao (Taobao+Tmall) exceeded one trillion in 20 13, and JD.COM announced that the transaction volume exceeded one hundred billion in 20 13.

Whether it is "receiving goods first and then paying" in Taobao system or "delivering goods first and then paying" in JD.COM, the transaction amount is recorded, and those figures in the background of the website have become the biggest pursuit of major e-commerce.

O2O can't simply measure the effect by transaction scale, and it is more appropriate to use "interconnected economy"; This practice is highly praised by Yelp in the United States, which will release data to prove how much local consumption in the United States is affected by it.

I have to admit the fact that most users don't have to buy online, but they may just be influenced by online and need to cooperate with online inspection to finally make a consumption decision.

Different methods of effect evaluation lead to different practices of e-commerce and O2O.

The former is generally based on standardized physical or virtual products; The latter mainly focuses on non-standardized services; The former can be rude and simple, while the latter must focus on good relations.

Therefore, when tools like WeChat come out, merchants and users can establish peer-to-peer relationships efficiently; Correspondingly, the power of WeChat O2O lies not in online turnover, but in customer relationship management.

If calculated by e-commerce turnover, WeChat cannot surpass Taobao; However, after connecting merchants and users efficiently, the business scale that WeChat can influence is larger than that of Taobao.

In the same way, Uniqlo operates hundreds of thousands of WeChat fans, and the calculation effect with micro-store turnover is too narrow; Relationship-based offline services (diversion, site selection, style design, service improvement) are a bigger piece.

For many friends who want to do O2O, it is very important to understand this difference; To do O2O, we should abandon the centrality of e-commerce "transaction scale".

Similarly, to do O2O, don't expect to improve sales performance in the short term, but need systematic transformation and efforts to get through online and offline; Using online to improve the efficiency of all aspects of enterprises.

2) There are differences in spatial scales.

Compared with offline enterprises, traditional e-commerce can use the borderless characteristics of the Internet to attract customers nationwide, and then use logistics (self-built or third party) to deliver goods nationwide; This is its commercial advantage.

It can be said that e-commerce will have certain differences in specific categories, but it is less affected by the spatial scale as a whole.

O2O is different, it has strong geographical attributes.

It is different from traditional e-commerce and offline commerce; Compared with traditional e-commerce, O2O pays attention to local consumption. In many cases, pairing local consumption with local users is a more efficient way. Compared with pure offline business, O2O has introduced online, which has advantages in attracting and retaining customers.

E-commerce and O2O have different requirements for space scale, which leads to the increasing scale agglomeration effect of e-commerce. The stronger the strong, the weaker the weak. Vicious competition and zero-sum game are the themes.

The development of e-commerce in China also proves this point: from the rise after 2008, to the outbreak around 20 10, and then to the integration after 20 12, there are almost only two giants, Ali and JD.COM.

Traditional e-commerce, nothing grows under the big tree, a large number of vertical e-commerce died, and small and medium-sized sellers suffered serious losses.

The geographical nature of O2O determines that a large number of O2O enterprises can survive "small but beautiful".

Internet giants are good at online scale expansion, but their offline capabilities are insufficient; Different places lead to higher threshold for O2O than traditional e-commerce, but there are more corresponding opportunities.

In recent years, online giants who once shouted to change offline business have changed their thinking and made efforts in O2O through direct cooperation with offline businesses or cooperation with O2O vertical platforms.

Similarly, it is also important to understand that O2O requires high spatial scale.

The high dependence on location makes the mobile terminal more suitable for the development of O2O, and the development of O2O is indeed accompanied by the outbreak of the mobile Internet.

Similarly, to do O2O with regional attributes, the integration ability and service ability of local resources are more important than online; The more important part of O2O is offline.

Any O2O that simply pursues online marketing and ignores offline integration and service capabilities will not last long.

Third, e-commerce entrepreneurship has become more and more difficult, and there are more opportunities to do O2O.

3) There are differences in channel importance.

In the past decade, the era of traditional e-commerce was the era of channel e-commerce. No matter the earliest 8848, JD.COM, Yi Bei and Taobao, most of them belong to online channel providers.

Competition between online and traditional offline channel providers has become a business theme in the past decade. Traditional enterprises have not mastered their own destiny from the beginning, testing the water and then going online. Taobao, which is becoming more and more powerful under the aggregation of Internet traffic, has become a referee, and another major player, JD.COM, has become a player+referee.

Traditional enterprises get an electric shock and do it independently without traffic, so they have to bear extremely high costs to settle in Taobao system and JD.COM.

Therefore, traditional enterprises have been calling for the transformation of e-commerce for many years, but few have really made a difference; The reason lies in the excessive dependence on third-party online channels and the inevitable conflict between its original offline channels.

In the era when channels are king, brands are first held hostage by offline channels and then oppressed by online channels.

In the era of mobile O2O, brands have the opportunity to establish direct contact with consumers, which is expected to reverse their previously oppressed position; However, the channel dealers who were overconfident before need to change the profit model of collecting land rent, improve their commodity management ability and brand service ability.

Regardless of the final success or failure of Xiaomi model, its ways of compressing channels, directly connecting consumers and improving efficiency will be used for reference by more and more brands.

In a developed society where supply far exceeds demand, the value of brand will be further highlighted.

It is very important to realize that the role of channels is changing.

Generally speaking, "brand+direct sales" is the most suitable for O2O, and most brands with chaotic channels need to choose channels; A large number of channel providers need to improve their commodity management ability and service ability, otherwise they will lose their value.

At the same time, in the era of O2O direct connection, the value of official website as the authoritative channel of the brand will be re-recognized.

4) The importance of offline is different.

In the era of traditional e-commerce, offline is also essential (warehousing is also offline). Many people mistakenly think that there is no difference between O2O and e-commerce. In fact, although traditional e-commerce stores goods offline, they are delivered to consumers by express parcels, and online inspection is intermittent and incomplete.

In the O2O era, offline experience and service are emphasized, and offline is a more important part than online.

The core of online and offline O2O lies in the direct connection between ancestors and services, and then the connection between people; To achieve direct connection, we need to lay a solid foundation on basic informatization offline.

From an industrial point of view, the greater significance of O2O is to use the Internet, especially the mobile Internet, to promote the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries; Take passengers online to offline, manage tools and methods to save costs and feedback to improve services.

Recognizing the importance of offline can guide enterprises to do O2O in an orderly manner: on the basis of adhering to service-oriented, it is a better O2O way for most traditional enterprises to carry out offline basic informatization first.

Recognizing the importance of offline, it is necessary to take offline verification and service as the core, and it is meaningless to simply complete the transaction online. Interaction with users is the best way to generate demand and meet it.

We see that Haier's transformation of O2O emphasizes interaction with users, and Metersbonwe's transformation of Bang Wei into Bang Wei's O2O emphasizes offline experience. They are both right.

But whether it can produce results depends on their products themselves.

Therefore, O2O itself cannot be questioned by the success or failure of a company, because success or failure is composed of a large number of conditions.

O2O has given new opportunities to offline enterprises, and also enabled former pure e-commerce enterprises to find a new development direction.

The future business must be online and offline integration and mutual leverage; Those offline companies that stand still and those online companies that are arrogant will be driven out of the arena under the new commercial wave.