In early 2020, at least 1.5 trillion to 3 trillion economic losses were caused to entrepreneurs in the retail catering industry. Today, the retail industry is deeply online, socialized and fragmented, platform-based and unmanned. These four major directions are integrated to find their own super product strategy.
According to data from Elos’ article, 2020 will have different impacts on the retail industry. In general, there are three major impacts:
1) The online influence is lower than offline, and the formal rise of fresh food e-commerce, telemedicine or office.
2) For near-field businesses such as community supermarkets and convenience stores, consumers still have a strong core demand for fresh food and daily necessities, while far-field businesses such as department stores, shopping malls, specialty stores, and catering are in a cold winter.
3) Large enterprises are more resilient than small and medium enterprises and respond to user needs in a timely manner.
Not only that, in the super product strategy, there are three other factors that change the direction of the retail industry:
1) The mental and behavioral changes brought to consumers by the national home.
2) Sudden blows have divided the competitive landscape, with the strong being stronger and the weak being weaker.
3) Adjust the strategic direction in the cold winter.
Combining these three factors, we will find that the retail industry’s super product strategy will integrate these four directions.
1) In-depth onlineization. For example, fresh food, as a representative of offline retail, sinks the market after baptism and rapid expansion of demand, and further enters e-commerce.
2) Communityization and fragmentation. Many offline stores use O2O+ communities to help themselves. Tools such as live broadcasts, short videos, and small programs have their own magical powers. Intensify the fragmentation of the consumption scene.
3) Platform-based, small and medium retail companies will face a new round of reshuffle. Many industry giants have demonstrated extremely high technology-driven advantages and mobilization capabilities, accelerating the integration of large-scale ecosystems into small-scale chains in a platform-based model.
4) Unmanned, as user needs change, unmanned technology will be applied in many scenarios such as the front and back ends of the retail industry.
According to the article of Elos, the in-depth onlineization of the super product strategy means that fresh food e-commerce will achieve a comprehensive breakthrough across regions and scenarios.
Communityization and fragmentation mean that companies will establish their own private domain traffic.
The platform model means that a group of small and medium-sized enterprises with weaker funds will fall in the cold winter. Under the trend of new retail in the past two years, many emerging enterprises have been racing to encircle their land.
The increase in demand for unmanned means that consumers' acceptance of unmanned services has increased. In the face of the economic winter, unmanned is likely to become a great tool for retail companies to improve efficiency and ensure profits.
More importantly, after this crackdown, on the one hand, companies with weaker performance were shuffled, and the stronger ones became stronger. On the other hand, the business ecosystems of some giants integrated traditional formats to make the industry more standardized. To a certain extent, the industry threshold has been raised.
So, how should retail companies use super product strategies?
There will be retaliatory consumption in the future. For companies that can survive this moment, deepening their transformation is the key to seizing future opportunities. Among them, three super product methodology can be verified:
1) Seize consumption opportunities and establish private domain traffic as a strategic focus.
2) Establish a user database, mine user needs, and be able to observe market trends keenly.
3) Do a good job in the precipitation of new users, maximize consumer value, and promote user fission.
In the retail industry, companies need to plan their own capability matrix. In other words, they can do whatever they want. The ultimate goal is to solve user needs and increase corporate influence.