Characteristics and Development Trend of Distribution of Chain Enterprises in China

First, the development of chain retailing.

The retail industry, characterized by chain, informationization and scale, has developed rapidly and become a pillar industry of today's social economy. At present, in terms of sales, retail enterprises have surpassed manufacturing, financial services, information and other types of enterprises to become the world's number one, which was unimaginable in the past. Among them, the application of chain, an advanced enterprise organization form, is a core factor for the development of commodity retail enterprises to such a large scale today. Chain commerce has not developed for a long time in China, but it has gradually become a main force in commercial retail. In recent years, the sales of chain enterprises have increased by more than 50%. It is estimated that in 2003, the national 100 chain enterprises will achieve sales of 350 billion yuan and the total number of stores will reach about 20,000. The sales of the top 100 chain enterprises will account for more than 8.0% of the total retail sales of consumer goods. The continuous expansion of the sales scale of chain enterprises makes chain commercial enterprises play an increasingly important role in the supply chain, which greatly promotes the modernization of circulation in China. The essence of chain enterprises is five unifications, namely, unified procurement, unified distribution, unified accounting, unified identification and unified management. And unified distribution is an important part of the core competitiveness of chain enterprises.

Second, several characteristics of chain commercial logistics

Compared with industrial logistics, the logistics characteristics of commercial retail logistics, especially chain commerce, are as follows:

1. The price changes rapidly: that is, the purchase price of goods changes rapidly: under normal circumstances, the price of fast-moving consumer goods operated by chain supermarkets will change rapidly with the change of market supply and demand, and the frequent promotion by manufacturers or retailers will lead to frequent price changes.

2. Frequent orders: there are many retail chains, and the order frequency and time requirements are high. Some small convenience stores even require delivery twice a day.

3. Disassembly: the supplier supplies in large packages, and the distribution center needs to disassemble and sort according to the order quantity of the store.

4. Returns: The distribution center also deals with gifts and returns (genuine and defective products).

5. Exchange: The frequency of adding and exchanging goods is also very high, adding new products and changing unsalable products.

6. Shelf life: Consumer goods usually have different shelf life and need targeted shelf life management. Third, the main ways of chain commercial logistics

1. Large retail enterprises set up their own logistics distribution centers.

Internationally, Wal-Mart is a representative enterprise to establish a logistics distribution center led by big retailers. At present, Wal-Mart has established more than 200 distribution centers independently, aiming at providing goods to its chain stores on time and on demand, and ensuring the stable operation of each store. Major international retailers such as Carrefour, Metro, Sears and Giuseppe have established modern logistics distribution centers with their own enterprise systems.

Some large chain enterprises in China have their own logistics distribution centers, mainly because a considerable number of chain enterprises in China are established on the basis of traditional non-staple food companies, vegetable companies, grain stores and other supporting outlets. These traditional enterprises have rich venues, facilities, equipment and personnel to establish distribution centers, and this form of distribution accounts for a large proportion. In these logistics distribution centers, most of them are low in informatization and mechanization, mainly relying on manual operation, and the distribution efficiency and response speed to shops are low. However, there are also some large enterprises with high level of logistics distribution centers. For example, the distribution center of Hualian Supermarket: The distribution center of Shanghai Hualian Supermarket has a building area of 20,000 square meters, an inventory capacity of 900,000 cases, and a daily handling capacity of1.9,000 cases. It can park 80 freight trucks at the same time with a service radius of 250 kilometers. It is one of the more advanced distribution centers of domestic chain enterprises at present. The technical content of the distribution center is relatively high: (1) The center adopts a storage system combining high-rise three-dimensional shelves and disassembled picking shelves; (2) Adopt front battery forklift, pallet truck, electric picking truck and pallet to realize mechanization of loading and unloading; (3) Electronic distribution of disassembled goods. Adopt electronic label sorting system and use electronic label equipment. After the store order is entered into the computer, the location indicator light and variety display immediately display the specific location and quantity of the selected goods on the shelf, which is convenient for operators to take out the goods. After the ordered goods are fully prepared, they enter the tally link, which greatly improves the speed and reduces the error rate.

2. Suppliers are responsible for their own logistics.

Direct delivery by suppliers, mainly suitable for supermarkets with large shops and large purchases. For example, some supermarkets and general supermarket companies in China have a unified supplier at their headquarters, and stores ask for goods from suppliers. The goods are sent directly to the store by the supplier. The advantage of direct distribution by suppliers is that it greatly reduces the cost and operational complexity of chain enterprises, so generally speaking, small and medium-sized chain enterprises mainly rely on suppliers to provide commodity distribution. However, the operation cost of this kind of distribution is high, and the response speed of distribution to stores is limited by the logistics level of suppliers, and also depends on the efficiency of information exchange between stores and suppliers.

3. Third-party logistics

In recent years, due to the increasingly fierce competition in the international circulation industry, some major international retailers have gradually tried to operate on the basis of their main business and take the road of professional development, and gradually entrusted the logistics distribution business to specialized logistics distribution enterprises in the society to serve themselves. This development trend is more and more obvious. For example, 7- 1 1 convenience store enterprises in Japan, Ito Yokado and many single supermarkets in the United States. Especially in Japan, decentralized retail stores account for more than 90% of the total number of stores. Due to the need of competition, these retail stores mainly rely on third-party logistics for commodity distribution.

At present, domestic manufacturers use more third-party logistics, and their products are sent to the distribution center or regional center of retailers through third-party logistics companies. Not many retail industries use third-party logistics, but some supermarket chains are trying to use third-party logistics. One of them is our Beijing Wumart Group Company, and 200 1 entrusts Wumart and Huang to carry out logistics distribution for its stores. Wumart has more than 300 convenience stores and supermarkets in Beijing. Huang is a professional third-party logistics company and has a large market share in Europe. Wumart cooperated with Huang to deliver goods to more than 200 convenience stores. The warehouse area of the distribution center is 65438+100000 square meters, the annual distribution capacity is 5 million boxes, and the distribution amount is 654380+10000 billion yuan, which can meet the dry goods distribution demand of 200 convenience stores once every two days. Logistics cost accounts for about 2% of sales. Among them, the key performance indicators are: supplier delivery timeliness, receiving efficiency, store order satisfaction rate, picking efficiency, return punctuality rate, inventory variance rate and order document delivery timeliness rate. Some experiences of applying the third party logistics in Wumart;