Appliance stores transformed electricity supplier price war

In 2012, for traditional home appliance chain stores, “opening shop” is obviously not a popular keyword. The most popular word is "electronic commerce" (commonly known as "electronic business"). In the middle of the year, Suning Tesco began large-scale financing, mergers and acquisitions, sales of e-commerce vendors, and sprinted 30 billion yuan; Gome achieved “three-wires” in its own e-commerce system, shares in Kuba, and cooperation with Dangdang.com. "Li"; Guangbai Electric continues to be closely connected with the e-commerce system of Guangbai Department Store.

It can be predicted that in the future, home appliance chain will continue to integrate the e-commerce field through various means such as open platform, strategic alliance, investment participation, and enterprise mergers and acquisitions, eventually achieving “online and offline integration” and creating a brand-new model of China's retail in the Internet era.

Transformation e-commerce joins price war

With the rapid development of e-commerce, transformation e-commerce has reached consensus in the chain stores. At the beginning of the year, Suning Appliance President Jin Ming announced the e-commerce force plan: Last year, Suning Tesco completed sales of 5.9 billion yuan, and this year it plans to achieve sales of 20 billion yuan and challenge 30 billion yuan. To this end, Suning has established an easy-to-purchase regional management company that goes hand-in-hand with physical stores, and Suning's e-commerce company also made large-scale financing for the development of e-commerce in the middle of the year.

The Gome is a "three-way attack," based on its own e-commerce Gome Mall, shares in Kuba network, while cooperating with Dangdang. Before the National Day holiday, all member accounts of Gome Store were all connected to the data center of Gome Online Mall. The former offline member of the physical store could log on to GOME Online Mall without registration, and enjoy the membership discount.

The face of physical stores started Suning, Gome's strong attack on e-commerce, Jingdong Mall and other professional e-commerce began to pay attention. On August 15th, Jingdong Mall began the “appellation campaign” and Suning Tesco “fought”. Then GOME also began to join, and the e-commerce market was unusually lively. Gome and Suning, who are from the physical stores, expressed their attitude of “no fear”: “We are coming out of the “death stack” of the price war and are not afraid of the price war at all.”

However, in the "price war", according to the monitoring of the Ministry of Commerce, several major "warring" companies have seen price frauds such as raising prices and lowering prices, and the order of the e-commerce market still needs to be improved.

At the end of November 11, "Double 11" has become another battlefield for e-commerce wars. In the end, it is difficult to say who wins or loses, but the e-commerce price war has shown that e-commerce as a form of business has gradually developed into a strong trend and is increasingly being taken seriously by consumers and businesses. With the resource advantages of physical stores, major home appliance chains such as Suning and Gome highlighted the concept of “unity on the line and offline”, not just focusing on online.

Resource integration bigger and stronger electricity supplier

The entry of home appliance chain stores into e-commerce requires more resources to support them. Therefore, improving its own system and expanding the scope of resources has become an important part. Acquisitions and mergers have become the main methods for expanding the business scope of e-commerce, such as Suning and Gome.

In mid-September, Suning invested US$66 million to acquire red children based on maternal and infant products, and took over the assets and businesses of the “Red Kids” and “Popular Purchase” brands and companies, and comprehensively upgraded Suning’s baby products and cosmetics. Operation. On the online section, Suning Tesco's mother and baby channel was renamed the Red Kids Channel, and Red Kid and Bingo’s independent domain names were retained to form two front-end entrances. In the offline section, Suning will expand at the Expo Superstore and Tesco Life Plaza. Maternal and child category, set up a special area for children. In terms of Gome, Guoba Holdings’ Kuba Shopping Network also announced that it has reached a comprehensive strategic cooperation agreement with Leyou, a leading brand in the domestic industry of pregnant and baby. This is not only the need of market competition, but also enriches the sales scope of e-commerce.

At present, in addition to the traditional advantages of 3C products, Suning's 3 major e-commerce companies have achieved a wide range of operations, including sports outdoor, automotive supplies, baby toys, children's wear, gifts and more than 20 Non-electrical goods.

Physical expansion towards comprehensive stores

Compared to the leap-forward development of e-commerce stores in home electronics stores, the expansion pace of traditional home appliance chains in physical stores has slowed down. On the one hand, due to the poor sales situation in the first half of this year, the overall sales scale of the market has fallen by over 20%, and gradually recovered after the “11th” holiday in the second half of the year. The sales profit of the entire 3C industry has become increasingly thin; On the one hand, since the beginning of this year, the situation of e-commerce sales has been bullish and some of the sales have been diverted.

In this context, home appliance chains have generally abandoned the practice of large-scale expansion in the past, instead of seeking “quantity” and seeking “quality”, entity stores have paid more attention to efficiency. Taking Guangbai Electric as an example, in 2012, Guangbai Electric entered the Sun Xintiandi store of Pearl River New City, and it completely oversees the Donglin Department Store of Nonglin Road. It reflects the trend of expanding the physical store range with steady steps. Under the pressure of the overall market environment, activities such as the VIP Exams and the Imported Branded Appliances Exhibition continued to be carried out in the second half of the year, and the high-end specialization business achieved remarkable results.

In Suning, Zhang Jindong, chairman of the board, made it clear that he "should remove the word "electric appliances" from Suning Appliances" and accelerate the "de-electricization" process. In physical stores, Suning continuously cooperated with manufacturers to launch new products and launched Microsoft's Surface tablet PCs to maintain the high popularity of physical stores.

There are many indications that old-fashioned chain stores can no longer be viewed with old eyes. When appropriate, traditional home appliance chain companies are likely to open physical stores similar to department stores to achieve expansion in a diversified field.