What Is The Potential Of "Secondary Growth" Of Digital Retail Enabling In The Transformation Of Four Major Supermarkets In Wuhan?

For Wuhan traditional supermarket, the post epidemic repair in 2021 is still the main theme of Wuhan's economic operation, and omni channel operation may become a new growth point.

On April 14, nearly a year after the "most beautiful vegetable market in Wuhan" was launched and transformed, the 21st century economic reporter revisited the vegetable market to taste the fireworks after the first anniversary of Wuhan's unsealing.

The manager of the old pot stewed soup told the 21st century economic report: "I used to operate in the fruit lake vegetable market. Now the vegetable market has been upgraded to a smart vegetable market, and the environment and management have become better. In particular, when it comes to attracting investment, the goods sold at each stall are different, which ensures the diversification of commodities and introduces some special snack bars, such as ours. "

At that time, Zhongbai group (000759. SZ) spent 6 million yuan to reform the fruit lake vegetable market and renamed it Zhongbai market, which was integrated into the first 3.0 version vegetable market in Wuhan. The market not only follows the tradition of unified operation of fresh products of Shangchao, but also provides neighborhood services such as catering, baking, quick cutting, medicine, etc., so that the daily life of citizens can be done in the shop.

As a major practical innovation in the transformation of the farmers' market, smart food market 3.0 is only one part of the digital transformation measures of Zhongbai group. However, on the road of transformation, there were well-known domestic and foreign retail enterprises covetously, and then were besieged and blocked by internet giants. The track was crowded and the increment was limited.

New growth point

In fact, the giants of Hubei commercial listed companies have gone a long way on the road of transformation.

According to the annual report of 2020 recently disclosed, Zhongbai group, Hubei Wushang a (000501. SZ) and hanshang group (600774. SH) are all profitable. Another listed company, jingzhijia (000785. SZ), is expected to make a profit of 1.35-1.5 billion yuan. Among them, the supermarket business of Zhongbai group is in the leading position in the region, while the business of Hubei and Wuhan takes the general merchandise business as the competitiveness. Hubei Wushang group and Zhongbai group are respectively ranked 16th and 19th among China's top 100 chain stores in 2019.

Taking Zhongbai group as an example, the data shows that the company's online orders increased year on year in the first half of 2020 The online sales volume increased by 124.42% year-on-year, including 10.37 million yuan in self built online group purchase platform, 279 million yuan through third-party sales platform, 39.8811 million yuan in self built sales platform and 704 million yuan through third-party sales platform.

In this regard, some industry insiders said: "this means that in the second half of the year, online sales have a more rapid development, in addition to the impact of economic recovery, but also reflects the gradual maturity of online business."

Everbright Securities analyst Tang Jiarui also pointed out in his research report that Zhongbai group's digital plus supply chain competitive advantage may become a new growth point for home community business.

In addition, Zhongbai warehouse carried out live broadcast with goods, with 3.7 million fans watching; Zhongbai supermarket carried out live delivery with goods, with a total of nearly 200000 visitors; Zhongbai Rosen had a total of 170000 live broadcast transactions; 8 stores of Zhongbai department store launched wechat applet to carry out live delivery with 162 times.

On the other hand, Hubei Wushang is the first enterprise in China to launch consumption vouchers on wechat and Alipay platforms. With the help of Wuhan consumption voucher activity boom, it can effectively stimulate consumption, improve the customer gathering rate, and promote the rapid recovery of consumption. In 2020, the company increased the intensity of live broadcast activities, and the annual transaction volume of the company's self built sales platform was 310 million yuan, and the business income was 26.4578 million yuan.

In addition, Wushang group puts forward the concept of "cloud shopping in Wushang". It takes the group's mid platform project and small program mall as the carrier to continuously improve the shopping experience of "cloud shopping Wu Shang", promote the marketing mode of live broadcast with goods, and expand online and offline integration with brand linkage and community marketing. With regard to the market scene of Zhongbai supermarket, Wuhan business group focuses on night economy to create consumption scenes such as night market, rooftop food bar and online red card punching point, so as to further gather popularity and attract passenger flow.

The track is crowded

Wuhan, as a mega central city with a population of more than 8 million and the thoroughfare of nine provinces, has a relatively good business environment. In addition to Hubei Wushang, Zhongbai group and hanshang group, recently, domestic and foreign retail enterprises have joined the competition. Wangfujing Department store, Hualian Supermarket, xinyijia and other well-known businesses have entered the Hubei market. International retail giants Wal Mart, Carrefour and Metro have also opened branches in Hubei.

As a result, for Wuhan's traditional supermarket, well-known retail enterprises at home and abroad are covetous on the road of transformation, and then they are besieged and blocked by internet giants. In terms of its digital channel layout, there are different degrees of competition among community group buying, o2o home service and live delivery.

Taking community group buying as an example, community group buying started in 2015, and the head Internet company accelerated its entry in 2020, and the players of each track had distinct advantages.

From the consumer side, buy more vegetables and enjoy the user resources of the main station, which has advantages in diversion and transformation. Although the traditional supermarket pays attention to the accumulation of digital members and consciously cultivates the habit of online consumption, it still needs to improve the user portrait and user transformation of digital members.

From the supply side, although the traditional supermarket has a mature procurement, warehousing and logistics supply system, but the system is mainly for offline channels, compared with the prosperity and optimization of relying on strength, the cost is heavier. If we build another supply chain, it is difficult to match the reputation of Shangchao in terms of the quality of goods. Then, some loyal customers will also be lost.

As for o2o home service, tmall has a rising trend in daily necessities and other fields, while fresh products are represented by box fresh, daily excellent fresh and Pu Pu. Although some fresh e-commerce apps such as RT Mart Youxian and Yonghui life are welcomed by the public, and the mode of "offline stores + online business" can also achieve better distribution, these traditional supermarkets in Wuhan started late, and more rely on the o2o platforms such as famo and meituan. Whether the self built platform can successfully exit the circle and the advantages of the self built platform still need to be further investigated 。

What can not be ignored is that the overall business volume of online channels is very low compared with offline entities, and the diversified marketing methods can only attract a small number of groups. Whether digital transformation can promote the development of commercial supermarkets remains to be tested.

At present, according to the main business and future planning of the four supermarkets in the past year, the main business is still operating entities.

According to the annual report of Zhongbai group, 210 new commercial outlets will be added in the coming year, including 10 storage hypermarkets, 50 supermarkets and 150 Zhongbai Rosen convenience stores, and will make the storage supermarket the largest in Hubei and the strongest in Wuhan.

Hubei Wushang also plans to focus on network construction and development. In terms of department stores, the flagship business group "Moore city" composed of Wuhan International Plaza, Wuhan business square and World Trade Center Plaza has been built, so the project of dream Times Square will be mainly arranged. In terms of supermarket business, it is committed to the operation of mass market supermarkets, and is positioned in the second tier cities of Wuhan and Hubei Province, which forms a certain degree of dislocation operation with the supermarket business of Zhongbai group.

Hanshang group turned to promote the "big health + big business" dual main business. From the revenue of last year, the "big health" fields such as drugs and medical devices contributed 256 million yuan of revenue, accounting for more than 50% of the total revenue.

In December 2019, Wuhan Zhongshang completed the transaction of purchasing 100% equity of Beijing jingejia home furnishing new retail chain Group Co., Ltd. by means of non-public share issuance. In addition to inheriting Wuhan Zhongshang's original large consumption business of modern department stores, shopping centers and supermarkets, Wuhan Zhongshang also injected large household business such as chain home stores into the listed company system. In fact, it is also the development of "big home + big home" Business transformation.