A Classic Case Study of Product Innovation Marketing —— Fruit Merchants: Burning Money to Promote Immature Fresh E-commerce
I opened my first store from 20 14 to 10, just over a year ago, claiming to do it? Alibaba in the fruit industry? Our fruit business has opened more than 300 physical stores in more than 20 first-and second-tier cities across the country. However, 20 15, 12, almost overnight, this rapidly expanding fruit kingdom collapsed, and a large number of stores in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Hangzhou, Nanchang and other cities closed. 16, 16, the boss of the fruit business was taken away by the police.
Fruit camp, becoming the latest lander on the O2O death list? Does its collapse indicate the decline of fresh e-commerce? Perhaps, the conclusion is just the opposite.
Reverse O2O:
Under the correct concept, shiny bad fruit
In the bursting of the fruit industry bubble, a lot of public opinion focused on its financing model. Partner crowdfunding? And then what? Member prepaid card? .
In particular, the former, according to a sample of a single-store investment agreement for fruit business, the investors of direct stores are limited partners of the company, do not participate in store operation, do not own store shares, and only participate in dividends. Direct store investors will get a return of 10% of monthly sales from the 45th day after payment until they get twice the investment principal. At the same time, it also obtains the long-term income of the original equity with the investment of 10%. The media also estimated that the annual return on investment of crowdfunding participants would be as high as 30% according to the monthly sales of 500,000 yuan declared by fruit merchants. Generally speaking, the risk of products with annualized rate of return exceeding 10% is already extremely high.
But this does not belong to the focus of this article, because from beginning to end, the fresh e-commerce model initiated by fruit merchants, as implied by Liu Bowen's article "Orangeman's Words", is full of treasures.
Theoretically speaking, the number of ways for fruit merchants to enter the online market after laying a solid foundation by paying attention to offline services, putting talent allocation and quality control in the first place is exactly what many fresh e-commerce companies that float on the network and rely too much on online shopping mode are missing. But in the actual operation process, this is only a correct concept, which does not conform to the ground management concept.
On the contrary, from its many offline actions, it can provide a negative reference for O2O, a life service such as fresh e-commerce.
A specialty store far from the community is not called a small format.
In a soft article published in October by Fruit Camp 20 15 and 165438, you can see the following words: Convenience stores, such as 7- 1 1, whole family, etc. Small community retail stores, mainly convenience stores and specialty stores, are being besieged to form a small business model, which is likely to replace large supermarkets. There is no doubt that the fruit business has caught up with the general trend of the rise of small-scale commerce. ?
Obviously, Fruit Camp has positioned its offline store as a small business. And the media revealed it? Stores choose a prime location in the city, with high rents and wages, so it is impossible to achieve high profits and sometimes lose money? . This idea of laying out a prime location does not conform to the small business model based on the community now, but is closer to the early form of specialty stores. Throw it away or do it on purpose to show your strength and attract partners. Such a store opening plan has been abandoned by e-commerce physical stores or O2O stores.
There is a simple reason. No matter what form of e-commerce, it is based on maximizing flat channels to reduce operating costs, while stores located in downtown areas increase these costs, which are directly within the radiation range of Shang Chao business circle, which is extremely unfavorable to competition and expansion.
What is even more fatal is the confusion of ideas and operating concepts. In the earlier report of Fruit Camp, it never forgot to mention it? Through online ordering and store delivery, it radiates 3 kilometers to the surrounding single stores, and realizes the fastest delivery to the door within 1 hour, solving the problem of the last mile of fruit delivery? .
But what about this? Internet plus small format? At present, in the pilot project of community O2O stores, the new operating model inevitably encounters problems such as high operating costs and insufficient community demand mining. Spent 10 billion earlier, relying on SF's strong logistics system and financial resources to lay out the community? Sex? It is also unsustainable, and the offline experience store opened in downtown areas, according to the introduction of fruit merchants earlier, the cost of opening a store is one million yuan. If you really only radiate 3 kilometers according to the operation idea, it will be much more difficult to recover the cost.
Besides, it only sells fruit.
Fresh e-commerce starts with explosions.
Among many positive and negative news about fruit marketing, one message has been absent, that is, what advantages fruit marketing has.
Perhaps the cause of this trouble is even more wonderful. The fruit business, which has always been known as fresh e-commerce, doesn't even have a decent e-commerce platform. Until the second half of 20 15, the fruit merchant said in the external publicity. After the e-commerce system is perfect? .
A fresh e-commerce company with a superficial online platform can only fight for its own offline stores. The so-called reverse O2O eventually went to the traditional fruit joining mode, but it was just a catch-up. Internet plus? The emperor's new clothes. Fresh e-commerce is actually not a one-way street, but a simultaneous development of online and offline, just like a seesaw. No matter which end is light, you can't catch up.
But this is not the key to solving the problem of fresh e-commerce Crucially, the fruit business of offline experience stores is not much different from the fruit counters of surrounding supermarkets.
This is not because the fruit merchants who were criticized by public opinion earlier do not understand the way of fruit management, which is characterized by high loss, high price and difficulty in standardization, although this is an inevitable problem that many fresh e-commerce entrepreneurs have touched. But the lack of core competitiveness is even more fatal.
? I must know why I must choose to buy fruit from you. Fruit? This word can be replaced by any other commodity type. But for fresh e-commerce, just one sentence? Compared with the vegetable market selling low-end fruits, it still oversells low-end fruits, and fresh e-commerce mainly sells specialty products and high-end fruits. Such vague positioning is not enough to solve the problem.
Previously, a number of fresh e-commerce initiatives answered this question, especially fruits, which consumers are more willing to see and believe. Under the background of insufficient radiation in offline experience stores, the successful rise of fresh e-commerce platforms often takes explosions as a breakthrough to strengthen the consumer experience.
For example, e-commerce companies such as SF Express, JD.COM, Tian Tian Orchard and Benli Life fought fiercely in 20 13, and continued to the overseas direct cherry picking war in 20 15. In this regard, Le Jue, the person in charge of Miao Xiansheng, Tmall's e-commerce platform, once said that fresh e-commerce has made efforts to push 1-2 products from the perspective of bringing attention. Based on price and experience, consumers will
More importantly, it can make up for the shortage of offline experience stores. Wonderful? Fruit will more easily form the shopping stickiness of consumers. This will expand word of mouth to other common categories, reverse consumers? Seeing is believing? The habit of.
Burning money to expand the scale may not necessarily enhance the stickiness.
In the whole O2O death list, a common law of death is to burn money until the capital chain breaks, and the main flow of burning money is to blindly expand the scale, with the intention of covering enough people with scale to obtain stickiness and long tail.
Taking the fruit business as an example, we will expand 300 physical stores in one year, covering more than 20 cities, and plan to open 10000 physical stores in the next three years. Such intensive store expansion will inevitably lead to the inadaptability of personnel reserve and operation mode. It should be noted that Baiguoyuan, a well-known fruit chain, has opened 100 stores in only 8 years since 2002. It took another five years, and the scale expanded to 1000 stores.
Even in? Internet plus? Under the extreme expansion of, the essence of exponential growth must also be transformed from 0 to 1, or a mature template can be copied from 1 to n.
A fresh e-commerce or O2O with insufficient product functions will eventually slide to the other side, that is, attract consumers with subsidies and specials by burning money again? Cheap? Mentality, thus shaping false stickiness. And in the fruit camp, all kinds? Member prepaid card? What is the real appeal to consumers? Charge 1000, get 300? , even? Charge 5000 and get 3000? On the basis of concessions. If the business is normal, this kind of promotion is understandable, but once it is forced to make money at a loss, such prepaid cards will not only attract funds, but also form a run-on wave similar to banks because of the closure of a store. This scene was confirmed at the end of the fruit camp.
A fresh e-commerce company that ignores consumers, has no real buyer's market concept, but only describes a good story, but can't form a differentiated competition pattern with surrounding supermarkets and fruit stalls in vegetable markets. It is invincible and difficult.
In addition, there are several lessons worth learning:
First, fresh e-commerce and O2O still have to flatten channels with a light attitude. For example, the original life network, which is booming online, is currently entering the offline life O2O project? Is it convenient? Is to cooperate with the local fruit shop, not rebuild. And if more fresh e-commerce companies want to break through, they can also adopt a city, a central experience store+several cooperation points to achieve effective diffusion and coverage. The final passenger entrance is still online, not an experience store.
The second is to build a big data system by using an online platform, which can at least predict a city's expectations for a certain type of fruit. This kind of big data analysis can turn the long tail of e-commerce development into a core data source, which can ensure that the fruit sent to a city will not be too little or too much, which will increase the loss or make it difficult to meet the demand. This is the key to distinguish it from traditional fruit shops.
The third is to constantly differentiate their own characteristics. In order to be successful, fresh e-commerce should actually use the long tail of goods to meet the needs of long-tail end users according to the mode of e-commerce. Everyone has his own characteristics, even if only one person has needs, he can succeed. Of course, the more distinctive, scarce and niche fruits are sold, the more expensive they are. It is more meaningful to put Internet modules such as booking and crowdfunding at the consumption level than at the financing level.
Classic case analysis of product innovation marketing II. Farmer, do you see the fish crying?
My hometown is located next to a tributary of Poyang Lake basin, with developed water system and rich aquatic products. When I was a child, our family never bought fish to eat. We wanted to eat fish, took one, planed a few earthworms by the river, and came back after eating delicious food. At that time, there were dozens of fish in the river that I could name. In just twenty or thirty years, most of them have become extinct. In the final analysis, the reason is the growth of population, people drink poison to quench their thirst and fish unscrupulously. In this process, some of our clever agricultural workers became the biggest behind-the-scenes murderers.
I don't know which clever agricultural worker saw that pesticides are highly toxic to fish and shrimp when reading the pesticide instructions. It is forbidden to pour residual liquid into ponds and rivers. It is this pesticide label that provides business opportunities for smart pesticide people. Maybe he has done experiments and mastered which pesticides have special effects on which fish. What medicine can poison fish with scales (carp, crucian carp, grass carp and silver carp) and what medicine can poison fish without scales (loach, eel and catfish). I won't say what medicine it is. Know what you know, don't ask what you don't know. The world is so big, I don't want anyone to find business opportunities from my posts, so I really feel guilty. So I began to teach ordinary people to buy medicine to poison the fish in the river. Slowly, people knew the wonderful use of this medicine and followed suit. Dozens of pills can kill hundreds of pounds of fish, which is really profitable. More people buy medicine, and those who buy medicine are happier. Originally, this medicine could not sell a few tablets a year, but now it can easily sell dozens of tablets and earn a lot of money. What was originally a warning to protect fish turned into a description of poisonous fish, and what was originally a bane of stubborn insects turned into a disaster of fish, which was perhaps unexpected by R&D units and manufacturers.
Now in autumn, the river drops and the temperature is high. This is a good time for fishing. Almost every day, young people come to buy this kind of fish poisoned by pesticides. And naturally I never sell it, saying it's gone and sold out. In the first few years, some familiar people didn't believe me, and even rummaged through my warehouse, scaring me not to take this medicine at all. A few years ago, I was rude to people who came to buy medicine and said there was no more. But after a few days, I was tired of asking again. Later, I simply replied that I didn't have this medicine here, and I didn't sell it. They asked me why it was foolish not to make money. I usually say this is a national regulation, which is illegal. In fact, we all know how ridiculous this answer is.
Year after year, the environment is getting worse and worse. The number of people buying poisonous fish has not decreased. Although fewer people come to my shop, there are still some. My refusal to them has also changed, just like several young people came to my store the other day to turn against the net. Boss, a box of so-and-so medicine?
? No?
? Why not?
? I'm not selling?
? Why not sell it?
? Why, because I'm afraid of retribution, because it's evil?
? Psycho? The young man who bought the medicine scolded me and left. Actually, I know it's meaningless for me to do so. They will buy it at another store right away. The fish in the river can't live because I don't sell it. Even so, I stick to my bottom line. Whether to sell or not is someone else's business, and you can have a clear conscience. But anyway, every time I see the washed river, I still feel sad. I hope that the country can develop pesticides that are harmless to fish and shrimp and completely ban these highly toxic pesticides.
The young man who poisoned the fish got his wish, bought several boxes of pesticides and poured them into the upper reaches of the river. Before long, all the fish in the whole river surfaced for fishing. More than ten miles along the river, almost all men, women and children reveled by the river, and the river was turbid, like a rotten pus flowing on the earth. The smiling face of fishing in the river is full of ignorance and greed. Two days later, the river was clear and calm, and those fish that did not sink to the bottom and were not caught surfaced. Big, small, newborn, shining in the slowly flowing river bend. Rotting, stinking, using their rotting bodies to prove that the world is dirty.
It rained these two days. I think these rains must be the tears of those fish.
& gt& gt& gt Click Next to enter more classic case studies of product innovation marketing.