It is in this choice that the e-commerce game between China and the US comes to such a situation today. Under the lure of “the fifth largest economy”, Alibaba launched global buying and global selling, while Amazon jumped out of e-commerce to engage in cloud computing and intelligent logistics. However, in the era of information FMCG, the most intuitive game we see is the market value comparison between Alibaba and Amazon.

It is true that the game between the titans of China and the US is more like a contest of national power, but what is more important is that the spirit of the game has become part of each other’s DNA and even ingrained in the hearts of the two peoples. And the emergence of new retail, once again ignited their morale.

See seventy-two changes of New Retail in China and The United States from giant scuffles and unicorn shells

The news has been overwhelming that a new arms race has begun between China and the United States, and this time everyone is betting on new retail. One of the first buzzwords was unmanned convenience stores. Amazon started testing Amazongo in private last year. Amazon’s “grab-and-go” principle was clearly designed to help consumers save time, And Amazongo, with its combination of machine vision recognition, deep learning algorithms, and sensor fusion, fits the role of amazon’s AI giant.

On the other side of the ocean, a large-scale land grab movement has taken place. Bingobox, F5 Future Store, EATBOX, Tao Coffee and others have come into public view. According to public data, BingoBox has opened 158 stores in 22 cities across China, and F5 Future Store plans to open 5,000 outlets within a year. In July this year, Alibaba launched “Tao Coffee” at the Creation Festival, demonstrating its technical strength. Seeing Amazon’s high position, Alibaba’s cake of unmanned convenience store was successfully drawn.

However, not all giant rest easy, wal-mart can be counted as a representative, although it five consecutive world top first, but over the past couple of years of Chinese the shutters shows that Chinese consumers are increasing, and local retail giant new retail power, such as yong hui invented super species, make from selling to the entrance to the one-stop service, Rainbow unexpectedly launched the metropolis life supermarket sp@ce, the kitchen, home, fresh and so on all integrated into the same scene, full experience.

In a sense of crisis, Wal-Mart finally moved into new retail earlier this year and made an offer to Jd.com, China’s second-largest e-commerce giant. From the 618 promotion to the 88 shopping festival and then to the fit store, Wal-mart gradually regained its presence and showed a sword to its Chinese rivals.

And nearby Wal-Mart and Yonghui are also eager to try. After decades of immersion, American fast food culture in China has a high degree of penetration, solid mass foundation. This year, KFC, Pizza Hut, McDonald’s and other American fast food representatives have launched real-time O2O, such as the use of APP, Alipay, wechat and other online portals to encourage consumers to order online and pick up their meals offline.

We don’t presume to follow up, and we don’t close our doors. As the first local brand, Dexis also adopted the mode of “offline + Internet OAO” to empower its own catering ecology through membership system. Under the new retail, the game between Chinese and American fast food culture will promote the arrival of the era of “experience first”.

But the battle between Chinese and American companies is focused on smartphones. Apple fans, pollen fans, rice fans, O fans and V fans have become the Chinese smartphone market, which has changed from a joint attack on Apple in the past to a separate battle, and set off a wave of new stores.

When lei jun lamentes that it is a fatal mistake to ignore offline stores, xiaomi has secretly taken over more than 200 stores this year, and huawei opened all 10 stores in Shanghai at the end of September, which is also intended to promote huawei mate10, which is about to be released. Recently, li nan also announced that meizu will land its first meizu store before the Spring Festival. Apple, by contrast, has continued its store expansion strategy from 2014, with the iPhoneX as its trump card.

Under the innovation of technology and service, the 72 changes of Chinese and American enterprises in the new retail era vividly depict the situation of giants fighting among themselves and unicorns breaking their shells.

Demand cause, ecological cause, science and technology cause: driving the new retail gallop the troika

Under the open and co-existing market ecology created by economic globalization, the arrival of new retail opportunities makes the survival of the long drought and change seekers enlightened, and this kind of coincidence also makes Chinese and American enterprises find the opportunity to compete on the same stage again. But behind all games, the essence is still new retail three reasons.

Demand cause: Consumer demand spirals upward

Maslow’s needs chromatography theory has five levels, which are physiological needs, safety needs, social needs, respect needs and self-actualization needs from low to high. At retail, the spiral of consumer demand can be explained in two ways.

First, comparative psychology drives demand stratification. Yonghui Supermarket has two special stores, one is red label store, the other is green label store. Green standard is the flagship boutique, red standard is the flagship ordinary, which is the implementation of shop opening strategy under the needs of differentiation. However, the red label and the green label will make consumers have a comparative psychology, I buy different products in the red label and the green label. Under this psychological hint, consumers learned to go to different stores according to their needs, so their needs were stratified.

Second, demand stratification promotes consumption upgrading. The layering of demand makes consumers clearly aware of the hierarchy they are in, and the division of hierarchy also draws a picture of different consumers. When a consumer’s income or psychological state changes, he will try higher-level consumption services to meet more demands. Submarine fishing is why the service is heavy, but also captured a large number of loyal, the reason lies in its grasp of consumers in the hierarchy of the critical point when the demand upgrade desire. When consumers’ consumption level reaches the condition that they can cross the consumption level, they will generally try higher-level services. And the better service experience makes consumers want to stay, so the upgrade is born.

In other words, the upward spiral is based on the premise of demand stratification. In the retail field, chain stores, mom-and-pop stores and large supermarkets may be divided into different levels due to SKUs, geographical location, etc. As Miui and Huawei launched their 1000 yuan machine and medium and high-end machine respectively, it is also to meet the consumer demand of different levels. However, under the influence of consumption level and psychological state, consumers always follow the trend of the next consumption can leap to a new level.

Ecological cause: The internal contradictions of the characters accumulate

Because of the stratification of demand, the retail ecosystem is also in a complex and contradictory state. For one thing, the current retail ecosystem in China is mostly labeled with brands. When it comes to retail stores, we will think of chain stores like 711 and Quanjia, or large shopping malls like Wal-mart and Carrefour, rather than certain dealers and stores. Trace back to the source, the capital good at throwing money to create the Matthew effect, the strong and weak opposition between big supermarkets and mom-and-pop stores has taken shape, as the vast majority of the side, millions of convenience stores have become vulnerable groups because they are far away from technology.

On the contrary, in the United States, there is a strong humanistic concern for vulnerable small convenience stores. For example, Bodega, an unmanned smart vending machine founded by former Google employees, has received a lot of criticism for being too intrusive. But it’s not that Americans are resistant to technology. It’s that they fear that its misuse will put some vulnerable people out of work.

There is no denying that the existence of strong and weak relationships in ecology is a natural law, just like the nature of the food chain. However, thoughtful people should not follow the example of the law of the jungle in the animal kingdom, because the disappearance of any species in the food chain may bring about the destruction of the ecology. In an ecology that can achieve win-win results, balancing interests is the best law of coexistence and the key to solving conflicts.

How to resolve conflicts? The premise is to communicate, in the traditional retail ecology, rely on phone calls, messages to communicate purchase and delivery information. In the new retail era, the innovation of communication is common. Nowadays, various social products are excellent communication tools. For example, wechat is a personal social tool and Dingding is an enterprise social tool.

Reason of science and technology: imagination space of technology iteration is big

It is particularly important that technology empower the retail ecosystem. Amazon, which is building a smart logistics system, is also keen on unmanned convenience stores. Although Amazongo reportedly delayed its official launch due to data crashes caused by too many customers, it is clear that unmanned convenience stores powered by a variety of high-powered technologies are promising.

And a bunch of empty convenience stores across the country. For example, F5 Future Store has been upgraded to the sixth generation, and BingoBox currently has 16 patents.

Take the financial channel of retail as another example. Technological upgrading has upended payment methods. Today’s convenience store owners will take the initiative to tell you that they support QR code payment. In the future, facial payment may become a new popular way. It can be seen that the upgrade of payment technology makes retail transactions more efficient and uses digital currency to get rid of the paper bondage of cash.

The upgrading of technology has promoted one retail innovation after another. From vending machines to unmanned convenience stores, from unmanned shelves to unmanned intelligent shelves, the coming of the era of artificial intelligence is turning part of the imagination of retail business into reality.

From the channel is only fast, the scene is surprising, the ecology can see the new retail under the vertical and horizontal

The best way to start an arms race is to show the sword in advance. There are numerous “retail test fields” in China. There are too many opportunities in China in the new era, and the game between Chinese and American enterprises is divided into three areas.

First, the channel only fast not broken

Wal-mart is wooing customers with a return service, a strategy that allows customers to return unsatisfying products purchased online at their nearest walmart store, according to a new report. From the perspective of channels, Wal-Mart has broken the principle of returning the original way of e-commerce channels, allowing consumers to get faster and more satisfactory return services.

Amazon has long coveted channels. Amazon snapped up Whole Foods in June, launching a frenzy of promotions. Having found the fulcrum of offline channels, Amazon finally grasped the core of online and offline integration and enjoyed the addiction of new retail. And cast more vision to the amazon below the line, also had the capital that invests sanjiang and lianhua at the same time ali finally.

Two, the scene surprise wins

It’s hard to imagine that vending machines have been around for nearly 50 years, and now its cousin unmanned shelf is being pushed into big companies like Alibaba and China Mobile by various Chinese capitals.

The scene occupied by the empty shelves is the office, which is also a crowded area for the executives of famous companies to go into the sea. For example, Guoxiaomei has just completed tens of millions of dollars of A round financing. Since its founder comes from AliJuhuasuan, its main product selection mode is to meet the snack needs of office white-collar workers. Similarly, the apes convenience team comes from Meituan and will focus on self-run products and online celebrity products in the future.

Occupying the office is equivalent to occupying China’s white-collar workers, and the value of the office scene is like ten South African diamond mines. But at present, the outbreak of unmanned shelves is still brewing, but under the impetus of capital, unmanned shelves may only be a giant dream.

In addition, pop-up shops are becoming a trend. After launching gadgets like the Google Pixel 2 phone, Google recently decided to open two pop-up stores. In last year’s pop-up stores, Google moved Google Home into the store. It is believed that the tech giant’s goal is not just to be cool. Besides the fixed mode of online stores, pop-up stores may bring more powerful brand promotion effect for Google. In the market with strong rivals such as Apple and Samsung, there is quite a strategy of “the enemy is in our presence”.

In pop-up shops, Chinese companies are doing more. Recently, Ele. me and Zhihu jointly opened an offline pop-up shop called “Zhihu Canteen”, which features “Interesting and different food”. However, the possible reason for this idea of combining knowledge and eating is simple. On the other hand, Ele. me wants consumers to do more than simply order takeout, so it provides mental food other than eating to help improve the end consumer experience.

Pop-up stores are different from offline stores in that they break consumers’ inherent impression and make them realize the uniqueness and scarcity of brands, thus creating favorable impression on brands. Meanwhile, offline breakout is a very cost-effective way of publicity for online enterprises. In the new retail era, the existence of pop-up stores is an explosive output of brand culture, which has a strong additive effect on retail itself.

Third, ecological empowerment

Although e-commerce has developed quite mature in China and Taobao and Jingdong are well known to everyone, the rate of online retail in China is still relatively low due to the heavy offline channels. So helping the retail ecosystem achieve online empowerment is a challenge.

It may not be easy for U.S. companies to step out of their established roles to empower the entire retail ecosystem. Even Wal-mart, in its role as a shopkeeper in the ecosystem, can do little more than provide a better experience for consumers, while offering little online advantage to distributors and manufacturers.

By contrast, As an e-commerce platform, Amazon does not directly participate in transactions, so it has a greater possibility to empower other roles on the platform, such as providing unified logistics services. In China’s logistics market, JINGdong’s self-run logistics has become a name card, while Ali Cainiao logistics is also trying to catch up, sf Express, santong Yida’s volume is also important.

Amazon is also following the trend of technology towards intelligent logistics, such as unmanned warehousing, drone delivery and so on. Logistics, as a retail commodity transport link, also determines the efficiency of the whole ecology. Therefore, after the improvement of logistics efficiency, the overall efficiency of retail ecology will rise to a higher level under the joint action of multiple levels.

Although the game between China and the United States has not yet entered a heated stage, but the current various prelude is enough to show that in the new retail era, on two vast lands, a new round of arms race between China and the United States is slowly unfolding, many sharp head pioneers, maybe the next Alibaba or Amazon.

Liu Kuang, Meditation on the Internet, wechat official account: Liukuang110