Entity Economy & Intelligent Retail
With the retail industry of entity form changing from the past situation of being underestimated to the current status of being appreciated, it is proved by practice that the development of two-way integration is the home for the retail market.
The retail industry has always been an important parts of China's entity economy, mattering its entire national welfare and its people’s livelihood. The report of the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party clearly points out that it is necessary to put the point of strength for enhancing economy into the entity economy in construction of a modernized economy system. In face of the fading dividends from online data flow and the insufficient impetus from economy entities, the intelligent retail format of Suning has become a catalyst to motivating retail industry to embrace innovation. Over the first half of 2018, Suning had exceeded 30% in main business income for 2 consecutive quarters of months, contributing to realizing its operation revenue of 11.0786 billion CNY. It is not really easy to make an achievement like this under the circumstances of slightly recovered retailing market.
The smart retail solution behind this proud transcript benefits the industry. "Smart Retail Solutions will be an open source system that will openly share and share with the industry and create a community of destiny for smart business operations." Suning’s head Zhang Jindong once said. With the continuous outbreak of Suning's smart retail and the overall development of the whole industry, China's real economy is expected to further warm up and revitalize.
Smart Retail Injects Strong Hearts into China's Real Economy Development
In recent years, a blast of vernal winds featured with new species and new formats has been blown into the retail industry. Under the drive of the retail giants such as Suning and Alibaba, a series of brand new retail species such as He Ma, Su Fresh, Suning Biu, Suning Jiwu and 7Fresh of Jingdong emerged in response to the right moment, drawing the public attention. Especially in 2018, Suning propelled the development of new formats and new species in intelligent retail to a peak.
At the initial stage, Suning emerged in the public view as a retailer, then experienced the times of “Plus Internet” and “Internet Plus”. Throughout the entire process, Suning achieved an intelligent retail format based on an integration of the online and offline channels by continuously transforming and converging its business procedures and retail resources. Revolving around “Intelligent Retail”, it realized a multi-industry convergence with retail as core by creating an Internet-based system characterized with diversified online platforms, multi-format scenes and all-around integration of its membership. So far, it has formed an intelligent retail products cluster featured with “Two Kinds of Large-Scale Shops”–Suning Plaza and Suning.Com Plaza, “One Type of Small Stores”—Suning Biu, and “Multiple Specialty Stores”—including Suning.Com Cloud Store, Redbaby, Su Fresh, Suning Sports, Suning Cineplex, Suning Jiwu, Suning.Com Stores for counties and towns, as well as Suning.Com Car Supermarket. All sorts of formats provided by Suning have brought a strong momentum to the increasingly slumping retail industry.
The “Intelligent Retail” coming into being and blossoming in the form of concept and entity has proved that all the new products and the freshly emerging formats thrive through neither the traditional retail stores nor the sheer online e-commerce; on contrary, their development and prosperity are based on a new model in which online and offline channels are mutually beneficial and highly integrated.
In the traditional manufacturing field, Suning has carried out in-depth cooperation with the traditional home appliance manufacturing industries such as Haier, Panasonic and Midea, to realize a set of advanced production and management technologies, such as the online & offline based joint action, data sharing, flexible manufacturing, personalized yet customized production, thereby propelling the upgrade on the technology and management of the traditional manufacturing industry.
At the same time, Suning has paved the way for all the products of its subsidiary business format clusters through the online and offline channels; thus, the innovative business formats such as Retail Cloud and Suning Biu has realized their joint action via online and offline pathways, enabling consumers to enjoy personalized and high-quality shopping experience. Among its business format clusters, the Suning.Com stores on a basis of the Retail Cloud in counties and towns are the important acts and layouts made by Suning in realization of deploying and developing its retail channels in lower administrative regions. By making better use of its strengths in brands, technologies and channels to endow impetus on the traditional retailers in counties and towns, Suning facilitated the recovery of the economy entities in the lower-tier regional markets, such as the third-&-fourth-tier ones.
As the People’s Daily elucidated, “Smart Retail is changing the existing retail industry in China and becomes a key power driving the innovation and entrepreneurship.
Smart Retail Drives the Transformation & Evolution of China's Retail Business
At present, the tidal waves of information also called the fourth science & technology revolution has swept the world. The high technologies such as Internet of Things, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence have stepped into a prosperously developing phase, providing new possibilities and driving force for developing and reforming the retailing business in China. Jigang Wei, the director of the Second Research Office subsidiary to the Ministry of Industry and Economy of the Development Research Center of the State Council, denoted in response to an interview with the media, “Whoever can seize the opportunity will be able to catch up with others and stand out; whoever takes action slowly will probably get marginalized.”
As early as in 2017, in a speech named as Vigorous Promotion of Entity Retailing Format’s Transformation to Intelligent Retailing Format, Jindong Zhang clearly pointed out that the future retail is the intelligent retail. Based on the technologies such as the Internet of Things and Big Data as well as the 3 major retail elements involved in the digitalization on users, merchandise and payment, relations existing in productive procedure have evolved into a demand-marketing-manufacture mode from the previous manufacture-marketing-demand. The change and transformation of the retail industry will tow and propel the seamless conjunction of retail and manufacturing resources, form an effective relation between demand and supply, and create a Suning intelligent supply chain that integrates ecologies of data, services, technology and management, thereby catalyzing the evolution of the China’s retail industry.
It can be seen from the fruitful achievements out of Suning intelligent retail’s launch and development that the key to building an intelligent supply chain system is in logistics. At present, Suning has launched a great number of intelligent terminal products based on black technology and achieved the in-depth integration with retail scenes. For instance, a sort of driverless vehicle named as “Crouching Dragon No. 1” is used for an-hour life service circle business of Suning Biu; meanwhile, a kind of unpiloted aircraft is adopted to cover the service for the remote villages in attempt to solve the problem caused by no delivery in the distance the last 1 kilometer away from destination. It can be said that the innovation on the black technology achieved by Suning in the field of logistics is based on the in-depth demands of the intelligent retail for service. By multi-scenes and the innovative product forms based on high technology, Suning strives to seek for the essences of retail services, as well as to reshape the relations between consumers, goods and market, and then changing the China’s retail business.
Via accurately sensing the pulse of the times and relying on the technologies such as the Internet, artificial intelligence and big data, Suning achieved a transformation and upgrade on its retail mode; thus, it met with a gratifying performance over the first half of 2018. In the next 6 months and even in the next few years, the field for using intelligent retail will be infinitely broad, and the intelligent retail will surely lead the developing trend of China's retail industry as well as keep promoting the steady yet better development of the entity economy in China and the world.
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