Of course, good goods are not for sale. As soon as the news that Tik Tok was about to be sold came out, Microsoft and Oracle Bone Inscriptions, two technology giants, submitted their bidding plans one after another. Interestingly, among the bidders in Tik Tok, we also saw a more unexpected name-supermarket giant Wal-Mart.

Initially, Wal-Mart tried to form an alliance with Google's parent companies Alphabet and Softbank to acquire Tik Tok in order to become a major shareholder in Tik Tok. However, after the US government limited the trading period and proposed that a technology company should lead the transaction, Alpha-bet and Softbank withdrew and the alliance collapsed. However, Wal-Mart did not give up its interest in Tik Tok, but cooperated with Microsoft to continue to seek to acquire Tik Tok.

There are also some reports that Wal-Mart can only become a minority shareholder under this scheme, so it does not rule out the possibility of participating in the bidding independently without Microsoft, but so far, Wal-Mart has not clearly expressed this will.

In the eyes of most people, Wal-Mart's business has been focused on offline supermarkets. For such a company, what is the significance of acquiring a short video company like Tik Tok? Does it want to use Tik Tok to bring goods for its supermarket live broadcast?

Is Wal-Mart still the offline super giant in people's memory? What is the purpose of its attempt to buy Tik Tok? What information and enlightenment can we get from Wal-Mart's related actions? Let's elaborate on it.

The first half between wal-mart and Amazon

For a long time, Wal-Mart has always appeared in the case of business schools as the opposite of Amazon. In order to set off Amazon's aggressiveness in the field of e-commerce, Wal-Mart is usually portrayed as a conformist, sticking to the basic offline disk and refusing to digitize its business.

In a sense, this statement about Wal-Mart is correct. Historically, Wal-Mart came into contact with e-commerce very early and started its own e-commerce business around 1996. However, in the early days, Wal-Mart did not realize the value of this brand-new business form, but only regarded it as an insignificant supplement to its offline business. As for Amazon, in the eyes of Wal-Mart at that time, it was only a fairly successful online bookstore, and its threat to itself was negligible.

In 2000, just as the Internet bubble burst, Lee Scott, then CEO of Wal-Mart, invited Amazon founder Bezos to Wal-Mart headquarters to "discuss some possible cooperation". Of course, as we all know, the so-called "cooperation" is just a euphemism. Its real meaning is to let Amazon act as a servant of Wal-Mart, or be directly acquired by Wal-Mart. We didn't know the details of the meeting at that time, but obviously it didn't go well.

Because if Wal-Mart can offer a price that satisfies the troubled Amazon at that time, the retail history in the next 20 years will be completely rewritten. However, none of this happened, because in the view of Wal-Mart at that time, Amazon was not of high value, and there was no need to spend too much money on it.

Later historical development proved Wal-Mart's mistake of letting the tiger go back to the mountain. Shortly thereafter, Amazon quickly recovered from the impact of the bursting of the Internet bubble, adjusted its business strategy, transformed from a bookstore-based enterprise into a "store of everything", and then evolved from a pipeline model to a platform model, and rapidly expanded its business scale by attracting independent third-party merchants.

Under a series of operations, Amazon has become the overlord in the field of e-commerce. Seeing the success of Amazon, Wal-Mart gradually woke up and began to pay attention to the e-commerce business. With the resources at Wal-Mart's disposal, it is easy to form a counterattack against Amazon. However, in fact, Wal-Mart's e-commerce strategy is very clumsy.

In practice, the strategy of online and offline independence is basically adopted, and offline resources are difficult to be utilized. For example, in e-commerce distribution, self-promotion is a very important form. With the help of Wal-Mart's offline resources, it is very easy to open this business. But in reality, it was not until 2007 that Wal-Mart launched this distribution form, which gave Amazon an advantage for a long time out of thin air.

In this way, under the fierce attack of Amazon and the step-by-step missteps of Wal-Mart, the power contrast between the two companies quickly reversed. By 20 15, the market value of Amazon finally surpassed that of Wal-Mart. This history is the history of the rise of Amazon and the decline of Wal-Mart that we often see in business school cases.

Wal-Mart March into E-commerce

However, the story of Wal-Mart and Amazon did not end there. 20 15, when the market value of Amazon surpassed that of Wal-Mart, great personnel changes took place inside Wal-Mart. GregoryB。 Penner succeeded RobsonWalton as the new chairman of Wal-Mart's board of directors. At the same time, DougMcMillon, an old employee who has served in Wal-Mart for 30 years, was appointed as the new CEO of Wal-Mart. The new leadership of Wal-Mart was born.

The so-called new people and new atmosphere. As soon as Wal-Mart's new leadership team was established, it set a brand-new development goal for the company: to build an Internet enterprise within the world's largest retail enterprise. Therefore, digitalization and onlineization have become Wal-Mart's overall corporate strategy from a partial strategy.

Around the new company strategy, the long-dormant giant Wal-Mart soon woke up. In order to make up for its shortcomings in the field of e-commerce, Wal-Mart adopted the strategy of self-construction and acquisition of two legs:

On the one hand, it has invested heavily in building its own e-commerce infrastructure. In 20 15, Wal-Mart invested 1 1 billion dollars to upgrade its online retail website and shopping APP technology. 2065438+June 2006, Wal-Mart Pay landed in all its stores, providing free delivery for online shoppers for two days. From July 2065438 to July 2007, Wal-Mart opened a technology incubator named Store No.8 to provide technical reserves and support for its e-commerce and new retail development.

In order to complete its platform layout, Wal-Mart recently reached a cooperation with Shopify, a well-known retail service company. After that, enterprises that set up a website in Shopify will be able to directly import Wal-Mart's website. Through this series of infrastructure investment, Wal-Mart's e-commerce ability has been greatly improved.

On the other hand, we use the huge funds in our hands to "buy" from buy buy on a global scale, and acquire and buy shares in successful e-commerce enterprises. 2065438+In July 2005, Wal-Mart acquired 1 Store 100% shares. 2065438+In June 2006, Wal-Mart acquired a 0/0% stake in JD.COM/KLOC and established a strategic cooperative relationship with JD.COM. From 2065438 to September 2006, Wal-Mart acquired jet.com, an American head grocery e-commerce platform, and incorporated its founder MacLore, making it the CEO of Wal-Mart's e-commerce business.

In 20 17, Wal-Mart set its acquisition target in the clothing field, and acquired five American head clothing e-commerce companies, including Bonobos and Shoebuy. In 20 18, Wal-Mart acquired Flipkart, India's largest e-commerce company, with a huge sum of1600 million dollars ... Through this series of mergers and acquisitions, Wal-Mart's e-commerce capabilities have been greatly expanded. Not only did it quickly expand the coverage of e-commerce to the whole world, but it also quickly established its own competitive advantage in important vertical fields such as clothing. Of course, more importantly, through the acquisition, we have also obtained excellent e-commerce operators like Rolle, who have made outstanding contributions to Wal-Mart's counterattack against Amazon.

Through self-construction and mergers and acquisitions, Wal-Mart's e-commerce business has achieved rapid development and soon became the second largest e-commerce enterprise in the United States after GMV. However, the "second largest" Wal-Mart, which was hastily acquired, has a lot of water: on the one hand, although it is called the second, it still lags far behind Amazon in market share. At present, Amazon's share in the US e-commerce market is about 37%, while Wal-Mart has only about 5%. On the other hand, although the rapid merger and acquisition has greatly increased Wal-Mart's e-negotiation, it has also brought great pressure to Wal-Mart's profit. We know that the development of e-commerce needs huge logistics and services to support it.

For Wal-Mart, which has no e-commerce foundation, all these require construction and huge investment. At the same time, compared with Amazon's algorithm-based pricing scheme, Wal-Mart's low-price strategy limits its revenue. In this context, the bigger the stall, the greater the pressure of loss.

In the past few years, Wal-Mart's e-commerce business lost billions of dollars almost every year. Faced with this situation, Wal-Mart had to adjust its radical strategy, shut down some businesses with serious losses, and integrate and optimize the remaining e-commerce businesses.

Some commentators believe that Wal-Mart's failure in the field of e-commerce means strategic failure. They believe that as an offline supermarket giant, it is a pity that Wal-Mart missed the opportunity of e-commerce development in its early years. However, it is foolish for Amazon to actively bet on e-commerce after it grows bigger, and it is even more desperate to expand blindly.

I personally disagree with this view. This is because, while Amazon has become the boss of e-commerce, e-commerce has gradually become an important form of people's shopping. With its advantages in the field of e-commerce, Amazon can not only encroach on the market originally occupied by offline supermarkets such as Wal-Mart, but also directly provoke wars against these offline supermarkets by developing "new retail" online and offline.

In this sense, the primary goal of Wal-Mart's e-commerce business is not simply to make a profit, but to narrow the gap with Amazon, and at the same time to accumulate all kinds of necessary technologies and experience to prepare for the offline attack on Amazon. In this sense, although facing a lot of losses, Wal-Mart's e-commerce development in recent years is generally worthy of recognition.

The "New Retail" Debate between Wal-Mart and Amazon

Just as Wal-Mart is actively developing its e-commerce business and trying to catch up with Amazon, Amazon has also begun to promote its "new retail" strategy, trying to extend its advantages to the offline. 20 15, 1 1, AmazonBooks opened, and the pace of Amazon's entry into the offline began. 20/kloc-in may of 0/7, Amazon launched AmazonFreshPickup, a retail store where users can pick up their own goods. Users can purchase fresh food in the store by placing orders online and picking up goods offline. 20 18 1 month, Amazon launched a brand-new unmanned retail store AmazonGo. With the help of computer vision, deep learning, sensor fusion and other technologies, consumers can take the goods directly at AmazonGo and realize "face-brushing payment".

If bookstores, fresh and unmanned stores are only small-scale strategic explorations, then Amazon's acquisition and transformation of WholeFoods is a large-scale attack. As a supermarket focusing on high-end organic food, Whole Foods enjoys a high brand recognition in the United States and has more than 400 stores nationwide. 2065438+In June 2007, Amazon announced its acquisition for 137 billion dollars, and it took a year to rebuild the Whole Foods Store. The transformed Whole Foods Supermarket in the United States can play the role of Amazon offline experience store and pre-supply warehouse. As a result, Amazon's overall entry into the offline situation has taken shape.

How does Wal-Mart deal with the menacing Amazon?

On the one hand, Wal-Mart tries to develop new services based on its existing advantages offline, so as to curb Amazon's advantages. Compared with Amazon, Wal-Mart's most important advantage is its dense offline outlets. As the CEO of Wal-Mart's e-commerce business said, if these offline outlets are regarded as warehouses, they are a huge asset.

Take logistics as an example: We know that Amazon's logistics is excellent. Relying on its global 109 operation center, it can deliver the goods ordered by consumers to your door very efficiently. Facing this advantage of Amazon, Wal-Mart launched a more radical logistics service scheme-InhomeDelivery.

The characteristic of InHomeDelivery is that Wal-Mart's delivery staff will deliver the goods ordered by consumers directly to customers' homes from nearby outlets and put them in the refrigerator. In order to alleviate the fear of strangers entering the home, the distributor's vest is equipped with a proprietary real-time streaming media camera, which can send the delivered live video to customers to watch.

At present, Wal-Mart has launched this service in cities such as Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Vero Beach. Consumers only need to pay 65438 yuan +09.95 yuan per month to enjoy this "negative distance" delivery service. Although this radical distribution scheme itself is still controversial, it is enough to illustrate Wal-Mart's distribution strength and win a point in the offline competition with Amazon.

On the other hand, Wal-Mart also actively learns from Amazon and applies advanced technology and management methods to its operations.

Compared with traditional retail enterprises, Amazon is very different, and the most crucial point is data-driven. When operating e-commerce business, all the behaviors of consumers will be monitored and recorded by the platform and converted into data, which makes it possible for Amazon to use big data to analyze consumers.

When entering offline, Amazon also brought this fine tradition. With sensors, payment records and other media, Amazon can collect a lot of data in its offline retail stores. By analyzing these data, Amazon can adjust its business strategy in time. Facing the pressure of Amazon, Wal-Mart is learning quickly.

At present, Wal-Mart has established a large-scale data analysis team, which is responsible for collecting and analyzing customer information, customer behavior and data from external media. With the help of these data, Wal-Mart can keep abreast of market trends and the relationship between supply and demand, so as not to fall behind in the competition with Amazon.

In addition to actively applying data, Amazon also pays attention to the timely application of new technologies to offline. Faced with this strategy of Amazon, Wal-Mart chose to actively follow it and make targeted adjustments according to its own situation, thus forming a suitable solution for itself. For example, Amazon's online store actively promotes unmanned retail solutions and uses digital technology to cut off the sales staff in the store, thus greatly reducing the cost of the store. Wal-Mart is also very interested in this scheme.

However, as a company that operates offline stores for a long time, Wal-Mart has a deeper insight into the needs of offline consumers. It recognizes that offline consumers often need the help of shop assistants. In response to this phenomenon, Wal-Mart did not try to build a store that completely helped consumers like AmazonGo, but deployed robots and drones while reducing the number of shop assistants.

In this way, when consumers need to find a commodity, they can ask the robot for help, and then the robot will take them to find these commodities. When consumers have no special needs, these robots can also help organize shelves and clean the ground. In order to ensure that these robots can effectively replace shop assistants, Wal-Mart has invested a lot of research and development. At present, Wal-Mart has even surpassed Amazon in the number of patents on robotics and driverless technology.

Enlightenment from Asia-Asia Debate

Through the above analysis, we will know that, unlike our usual understanding, Wal-Mart is no longer an offline supermarket in the traditional sense. At least from 20 15, Amazon has been actively transforming in all directions in order to fully meet the online and offline challenges.

Now, let's go back to the question at the beginning of this article: Why is Wal-Mart so obsessed with acquiring Tik Tok? In my opinion, this is largely due to the need to fight against Amazon. In the last year or two, live e-commerce has sprung up in China, and live e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, Tik Tok and Aauto Quicker have created considerable GMV.

In the United States, live e-commerce is far less popular than in China, but the trend is similar. As an online retail giant, Amazon quickly seized this trend.

Since last year, Amazon has launched the AmazonLive feature. With this function, sellers on the platform can broadcast live very easily, and buyers can click on the carousel next to or below the video to complete one-click purchase. In addition to Amazon, a number of other e-commerce companies, including Shopee and Lazada, have also launched live broadcast functions to join the ranks of operating live e-commerce.

Obviously, this wave of operations by Amazon and other e-commerce companies has brought tremendous pressure to Wal-Mart. If Wal-Mart doesn't respond properly, not only its hard-won position as the second child of e-commerce may be lost, but its offline sites may also suffer a "dimensionality reduction blow". It is in this situation that Wal-Mart is eager to establish its own live e-commerce business.

However, in the case that companies such as Amazon have already got there first, how easy is it to successfully kill a bloody road in the field of live e-commerce? In view of this, to build a live broadcast platform out of thin air, it is better to buy a mature live broadcast platform and then make the necessary transformation.

And among many mature live broadcast platforms, which one is more ideal than Tik Tok? In terms of the number of users, it is now the largest in the United States; From the user composition, reach the young people who are most willing to spend; In terms of user viscosity, it is also the highest among all platforms. Knowing this, it is not difficult for us to understand why Wal-Mart covets Tik Tok so much.

Although the competition between Amazon and Wal-Mart mainly occurs overseas, the information and enlightenment conveyed by this competition deserve our attention.

First of all, although e-commerce is developing rapidly, it is unlikely to completely replace the status of offline retail. In recent years, with the rapid development of e-commerce at home and abroad, some people think that e-commerce may completely replace offline retail and become the main form of retail. However, judging from the competition practice between Amazon and Wal-Mart, this situation does not seem to be in line with the current reality.

Although Amazon's revenue has been growing, this does not mean that the revenue of offline supermarkets represented by Wal-Mart is declining. In fact, in recent years, Wal-Mart's revenue has been rising. In some cases, its revenue growth even exceeds that of Amazon.

Why is this happening? Fundamentally speaking, this is determined by the fundamental characteristics of retail. According to Rogge. Bettencourt, a retail expert, believes that retail is essentially a multi-sectoral production activity. In addition to providing goods, it also provides various services for consumers. These services include cheapness, diversity, convenience and consumer experience. Obviously, it is unrealistic for a given retailer to provide all these services at the same time, so they can only provide some of them in detail.

For e-commerce, the services they provide are mainly cheap and diverse-compared with offline supermarkets, e-commerce can usually organize more sources of goods at lower cost, so it can be more advantageous in terms of price and commodity diversity. But at the same time, e-commerce has inherent disadvantages in convenience and consumption experience.

For example, if we want to buy some small things like needles, threads and brains online, I'm afraid the delivery cost will be higher than the value of the goods themselves, not to mention that if it's urgent, we can't wait for the delivery staff to deliver them to our door. In this case, if there is a supermarket nearby, we will probably go there directly to buy it. From this perspective, even if e-commerce is developed again, it cannot completely replace the status of offline retail.

Secondly, although e-commerce will not completely replace offline retail, traditional offline retail must also be actively transformed, otherwise it will inevitably face death threats. We say that offline retail will not disappear, mainly for the whole industry. But I am not sure who will carry out these industries in the future, and whether this industry will be the same as before.

In fact, once e-commerce companies have accumulated enough power, they will try to actively guide these offline forces to continue to seize the offline market. Faced with such a situation, it is almost impossible for traditional offline retailers to stick to their original sites. In this sense, the active transformation of offline retail to digital and online is actually not a business expansion that deviates from the main business, but a necessary strategic defense.

Thirdly, in the face of the dimensionality reduction attack initiated by e-commerce, offline retail enterprises should actively explore their competitive advantages around their own characteristics, and at the same time, they can introduce resources and strength from outside through mergers and acquisitions and alliances. Generally speaking, offline is usually in a relatively weak position when competing with online. However, this does not mean that there is no chance of winning offline. As we have pointed out, offline retailing has inherent advantages in convenience and consumption experience.

In the competition with e-commerce, offline retail enterprises should actively explore these advantages, and strive to cultivate a unique operating model on these advantages, making it their own killer. At the same time, offline enterprises also need to actively introduce external resources such as technology and talents. If funds permit, it can be realized through mergers and acquisitions, and if funds are insufficient, it can be realized through cooperation with other enterprises. Through these means, offline enterprises can effectively achieve the purpose of taking advantage of the trend, thus effectively countering the attacks launched by online enterprises.