First, the status quo of retail development in China
(A) business level is uneven, the gap is obvious
Before 1990s, the retail market in China kept a single pattern of department stores dominating the world for a long time, with a market share of over 60%. Since the opening to the outside world, with the change of consumer demand and the intensification of competition in the retail market, new retail formats such as large-scale comprehensive supermarkets, supermarkets, convenience stores, specialty stores, home centers and storage malls have developed rapidly, which has become the main driving force for the expansion of China's retail industry. In the past 10 years, China's retail industry completed the business process of foreign retail industry in 150 years. Almost all of the more than 20 formats formed by the eight retail revolutions in western developed countries have appeared in China, but various new formats have appeared at the same time, and there is no time stage. Some formats are obviously insufficient, which is far from the internationally accepted standard formats.
(2) The overall scale is small and the cost is high.
At present, the scale expansion of domestic enterprises is more extensional expansion, and more attention is paid to seizing network resources. The scale benefit is not fully reflected, and the comprehensive gross profit margin has only improved to a certain extent, but the operating expenses remain high, resulting in a net profit margin far lower than that of international giants such as Carrefour and Wal-Mart. According to the data of National Information Center, in 2004, the average profit rate of chain retail enterprises was only 0.85%, the net profit rate of the top 100 supermarket chains was 1.22%, and the average profit rate of foreign supermarket chains was 2.22%. The high operating cost is attributed to two aspects. Externally, China's logistics cost is high, accounting for 16.7% of GDP, while developed countries only have half of this figure; The internal factor is the high cost of sales management, with an average of 30% in China and 0/6% in Wal-Mart/KLOC. The slow turnover of goods and the low level of procurement and distribution have caused problems such as high inventory and out-of-stock storage. This large-scale advantage and low-price sales strategy of foreign businessmen greatly increased their market share, which made the market share of domestic retail enterprises shrink continuously and directly affected the market position of domestic retail enterprises.
(C) There is a big gap between the management level and the international retail industry.
1. The management of commercial enterprises in China mainly relies on traditional management methods. The quality of employees in retail enterprises is low, which generally cannot adapt to the development of enterprises and lacks senior management talents, which leads to the lack of original innovation in enterprises.
2. In marketing, we mainly rely on shopping discounts, gifts and other promotional means. Instead of establishing brand, service, reputation and overall corporate image as the leading marketing strategy. Lack of market segmentation, lack of standardized management in product mix, service standard, price, promotion and store layout.
3. What is particularly prominent is that there is no high-tech support, mainly due to the low degree of informationization. Enterprise management does not use modern electronic information technology. Foreign commercial enterprises take management information system, electronic data processing system and decision support system as the core, forming automatic management assisted by network, which is completely different from the traditional retail business model.
4. The target market positioning of retail enterprises in China is not clear. Market positioning is not only an enterprise's own problem, but also related to the whole industry structure, scale structure and spatial structure. Because of unclear positioning, it is difficult for China retail enterprises to accurately grasp the needs of target customers and identify real industry competitors, so it is difficult to occupy a huge market share and thus form a competitive advantage with their own enterprise characteristics.
Secondly, analyze the development trend of China retail industry from the development trend of the world retail industry.
(1) informatization
From our previous analysis of the current situation of China's retail industry, we can draw a conclusion that compared with the high-tech and high-informatization of international retail enterprises, the biggest problem existing in China's retail industry now is the low degree of informatization. After China's entry into WTO, enterprises tend to be internationalized. The first problem to be solved is to narrow the information technology gap with the international retail industry. In addition, the use of e-commerce can accelerate the internationalization of the retail industry, and enterprises can use the Internet to establish their own image, brand and management characteristics. The main problem is to strengthen and speed up the construction of information systems. It is necessary to integrate the information flow within the enterprise, handle e-commerce on the basis of internal informatization, increase capital investment, improve the information infrastructure conditions of the enterprise, establish a computer network connecting the inside and outside of the enterprise, realize the scientific management of various resources of the enterprise, and strengthen external relations at the same time. In addition, business information system (MIS), commodity supply system (GOS) and decision support system (DSS) have been established, which enables enterprises to sort out and analyze all kinds of information in business activities in time, and forecast and warn the market in advance according to accurate business information, so as to avoid blindness in business activities, ensure commodity quality, reduce operating costs and improve the scientific management level of retail enterprises.
The process of informatization needs a large number of talents, not only network technical talents, but also compound talents who know both e-commerce and retail operation. Compound business talents are one of the necessary conditions for the informationization of retail industry. However, although the traditional managers in China are experienced, they are not familiar with the knowledge of network technology. In addition, the public's lack of understanding of the technology involved in e-commerce, the status of infrastructure network and the benefits it can bring to consumers also constitutes an obstacle to the promotion of e-commerce. How to train and introduce relevant talents as soon as possible is an urgent task for the development of retail information in China.
(2) Branding
That is to use the excellent brand assets of retail enterprises to form the brand effect of retail enterprises and bring competitive advantage. Mainly retail enterprises should form a unified corporate brand image in terms of product quality and combination, service content and standards, especially in terms of service standardization. Therefore, in the form of foreign capital entering the retail industry in China, large retail enterprises in China should give full play to their reputation advantages formed in the long-term operation and take various measures to establish a good corporate brand, service image, environment and employee image, so as to improve their comprehensive competitiveness. China retail industry should consider the following four strategic points when cultivating service brand assets:
1. Differentiation. Modern retail enterprises with good service brands should pay attention to innovation, that is, create a service brand relationship that is different from other competitors, so as to deepen the impression of service brands in customers' minds. 2. Enhance the reputation of modern retail enterprises. Develop important and valuable services for customers. 3. Establish emotional connection. Enterprises should strive to go beyond the logical and economic level of service, because the core value of customers often goes beyond the conventional logic. 4. Internalize the service brand. In the process of establishing service brand, employees occupy a very important position, and internal marketing is the key to realize the internalization of service brand.
(3) collectivization
Because retail industry is one of the most obvious industries with economies of scale, the consolidation and promotion of retail channel value strongly depends on scale. The research shows that the relationship between retailer's performance and scale presents an "S" curve function because of the existence of retailer's scale economy, which indicates that when the retailer's store scale reaches a critical point, its operating performance can rise rapidly. This profit growth feature has been effectively verified in the development process of retailers such as Wal-Mart and Carrefour.
Commercial enterprise group refers to an enterprise consortium with capital as the main link, parent company as the main body, and group articles of association as the industry standard. The implementation of retail collectivization can not only increase the total capital, eliminate business overlap and high operating costs, but also produce economies of scale and synergistic effects in many aspects such as management, technology development, information sharing and resource allocation, and give full play to the overall advantages quickly.
At present, the scale of global retail enterprises has changed from traditional single-store operation to chain operation, and the competition mode has also turned to intensification, thus occupying China's consumer market with the strategy of scale, chain operation and low price, forming an absolute cost advantage. Therefore, if retail enterprises in China want to become the dominant force in the domestic consumer market, they must expand their scale, enhance their capital and their own strength, which provides the possibility of fair competition with international retail enterprises, and group management provides the possibility of reducing costs and seeking scale effect. In addition, with the improvement of economic development level and complexity, retail enterprises set up retail enterprise groups through capital integration, and use their respective advantages to realize large-scale procurement, thus reducing costs.
Strengthen the "marriage" with foreign businessmen and cultivate their own industrial groups. According to the relevant regulations of China's entry into WTO, China promised: after entering WTO, foreign investors will be allowed to own 49% of the invested company immediately, and 50% in two years; Two years after China's entry into WTO, foreign banks will also be allowed to join China enterprises in some circulation fields. Five years later, China's private enterprises will be allowed to intervene in some circulation fields; China will give some foreign businessmen distribution rights and so on. With the present situation of the retail industry in China and the competitiveness of enterprises, there is no way to compete. Therefore, we can adopt a flexible way to strengthen the "marriage" with internationally renowned enterprise groups that are members of WTO. In this regard, China's retail industry has the experience of cooperating with the world's retail giants, but in the future, it needs to change from passive to active, and make full use of this channel to make the products of China Industrial Group enter the transnational chain operation and franchise distribution network.
internationalization
That is to realize the transnational operation of China retail enterprises. Including sole proprietorship and joint venture. According to statistics, by the end of 2004, Wal-Mart Group, the world's largest retailer, had opened more than 65,438+0,600 branches in Canadian, Mexican, China and Indonesian countries. In 2004, the Group's global sales exceeded US$ 285.2 billion. In 2005, Wal-Mart ranked first among the world's top 500 enterprises for five consecutive years. Japan's overseas retail enterprises have accounted for about 465,438+0% of the total number of Japanese enterprises established overseas, and their internationalization tendency is obvious. Retail enterprises in France, Netherlands, Taiwan Province Province of China and other countries and regions have also implemented internationalization strategies and achieved remarkable results.
The establishment of WTO and the promulgation of regional free trade agreements have gradually reduced the trade barriers and obstacles of various countries, and gradually relaxed the management and restrictions on international investment, which is conducive to the use of transnational investment and procurement, and also provides opportunities for the international operation of retail enterprises. While foreign-funded enterprises "grab territory" and accelerate their entry into the China market, China retail enterprises should speed up the pace of asset restructuring and make centralized strategic adjustments to many peer enterprises through joint ventures, mergers, acquisitions and holding. Set up some giant enterprises or enterprise groups in the retail industry to build an "aircraft carrier" in the retail industry, so as to turn the defensive into the offensive and actively respond.
Modern communication has promoted the economic and cultural flow and integration of all countries in the world. Consumer information has been popularized and spread rapidly, and people's consumption concepts, lifestyles, purchase methods and habits are gradually converging, thus meeting people's consumption needs through international retail formats and sales methods. The convergent development of international consumer demand also urges China retail enterprises to realize international operation.
According to the actual situation of China's retail enterprises, the investment mode of international operation generally adopts joint venture. That is, the retail enterprise capital in China and the local national enterprise capital are operated in partnership, and all parties * * * jointly operate, * * * are responsible for their own profits and losses, and * * * bear the risks. This method has the advantages of less investment, less risk and more treatment. Moreover, the joint venture binds the interests of foreign capital and domestic capital together, so the risk of foreign capital is small and it can get help from domestic capital.
To sum up, in view of many problems existing in China's retail industry compared with international retail industry, such as uneven management level, small overall scale, large gap in management technology and management level, it is an inevitable trend for China's retail industry to effectively participate in international competition and enhance the comprehensive strength of national industries in the future.