WAL-MART Electricity Supplier New Experiment: Recapture Amazon'S Stolen Land

Sales of WAL-MART P grew by 27% in the previous quarter. In the last fiscal year, WAL-MART's global online revenue has increased by 30% to $10 billion, and its online revenue is expected to exceed US $13 billion this year.

In terms of turnover, it has become the fourth largest supplier of electricity in North America.

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< p > however, the Amazon will never be the next Amazon.

As Ben Galbraith, vice president of WAL-MART global electricity supplier, said, the three key to WAL-MART's embrace of the electricity supplier is "personalization, localization and mobility". The biggest advantage is that they have 11 thousand physical stores and 2 million 200 thousand staff members, and there are 8 million products on the website.

"If handled properly, the advantage that these stores can play is that Amazon can't match it."

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< p > "these stores bring us huge amounts of data, no one can match them."

"We are trying to link all the data, and all of the customers' online search and browsing behavior and customers' online buying behavior are all linked up to find out the meaning of their behalf," Loren Simon, WAL-MART's senior director of online marketing, said at an event in San Francisco.

However, few companies in the world can handle such a large amount of information, shops, data and consumer behavior, so we have to do it ourselves.

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< p > from 2011, WAL-MART began to explore the electricity supplier, and then launched 10 localized e-commerce platforms worldwide.

But until this year, they began to shift all their services to their own R & D platform, so you can say that things are getting serious.

For example, WAL-MART began to use its own web search tool, which increased their conversion rate by 20%.

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More importantly, they began to integrate consumer data online and offline, allowing websites to provide more personalized recommendations and provide more accurate customized information to customers. P

Data mining has greatly improved the quality and quantity of push content.

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< p > "these recommendations are not only based on past search and purchase records of customers, but also include consumption records of other users when they purchase.

By crossing it, you will know how much information it is. "

Simon said.

This function is very simple, that is, "the other users who buy this product also buy"...

Recommendation, but we have to say that if WAL-MART can make use of the huge consumption data of 11 thousand entities in the world, the effect will be terrible.

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P, on the other hand, these data not only affect customers, but also affect WAL-MART suppliers.

"The reason we are able to keep a low price is because we can find the best suppliers."

Simon said, "so much of our data mining is not to increase our profits, but to optimize our supply."

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< p > if you can make good analysis and forecast from the demand side, you can make a good adjustment to the supply side.

For example, the sudden increase in nappy consumption can make suppliers aware that the baby car is also about to usher in a sales climax, so that production and consumer demand are directly linked to help the supply chain more efficient and reduce expenditure, thus allowing WAL-MART to get goods at a lower price.

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< p > so, on the newly launched WAL-MART website, apart from the redesign of the entire interface, the major change is the substantial increase of customized push content for individual users.

Another function that they attach great importance to is to tell consumers what products they are most concerned about, and tell them what promotions or preferences are available in the physical shops near WAL-MART.

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< p > this is called an attempt to "localize".

In fact, many a href= "http:// www.sjfzxm.com/news/index_c.asp" > entity chain stores < /a > tend to operate independently. For example, the largest chain member storage in the United States is Costco, and its website and entity stores do not have much contact, so if customers want to search through the website to find what stores nearby, it is more difficult to achieve.

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< p > but in "a href=" http:// "www.sjfzxm.com/news/index_c.asp" > Logistics < /a > expensive and slow in the United States, for customers, a 10 minute drive to the supermarket to buy things will be more often than buying online and waiting for at least two days to get more attractive, so this also contributed to WAL-MART's desire to encourage people to go to the physical store consumption through websites, and, of course, for WAL-MART, it is also more profitable than selling products directly online.

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< p > another challenge for WAL-MART is mobile.

"A href=" http:// www.sjfzxm.com/news/index_c.asp "> mobile terminal < /a > is very interesting, but it has always been our biggest headache, and I believe so for other retailers.

Simon said, "the flow of mobile terminals is increasing rapidly, but people's behavior in mobile terminals is so different that the conversion rate is much lower than that of PC."

And, to be honest, WAL-MART is still groping for PC, and mobile terminals bring new problems to them.

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< p >, so they have made many attempts.

For example, the new website will have different interfaces for flat panel and mobile phone.

For example, all of their stores are planning to provide geo fencing functions so that they can push goods information on customers' shelves to mobile phones and provide "accurate to shelf" information.

"We really hope that applications can bring customers to the store so that they can plan well before they go to the store or interact with them in real time."

Simon said, "mobile apps for us are not.Com, but not physical stores.

It's glued together the pieces on the line. "

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From P to 2009 this year, WAL-MART's technology expenditure has increased by 70%. In the next year, the investment in this field will increase by 12%.

Perhaps WAL-MART's efforts have been working slowly. Simon's team once allowed WAL-MART to refresh its website's Traffic Records last year, and, according to him, this year's traffic is improving almost every day.

However, the "cement store" that they are proud of has brought their advantages and challenges.

For example, their mobile apps have encountered complaints from many users after the update, while more star rating critics criticized that "there are good ideas but no good implementation."

For example, the cashiers at WAL-MART store do not know how to cooperate with their own applications. When customers find coupons happily using mobile apps, the cashiers fiddle with equipment for a long time, but eventually tell them they can not operate.

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