Over 50% traditional retailers launch e-biz by '11 (2)

Everyone has their clever moves to share the cake


"In 2005, GOME and Suning waged a price war in Nanjing. Consumers began to line up before dawn. According to statistics published at that time, the total transaction volume of both parties on that day amounted to about RMB 100 million Yuan. 7 years later, consumers' carnival moves to the internet, and the transaction volume was nearly 200 times more", said Yang Bin, founder of Analysys, about the vigor of online shopping.


In spite of that, the "double 11" sales are not the normal status of the online shopping market after all. The State Council's Guiding Opinions on Vigorously Promoting the Development of IT Application and Effectively Safeguarding Information Security published in July this year proposes that: by the end of the 12th Five-year Plan, online retail value should account for more than 9 percent of overall retail sales of social consumption products. At the end of the 2011, the proportion was around 5 percent. Judging from this rate, online shopping is nothing but a small piece of the large cake of products retailing. Statistically alone, it is still too soon to say that online shopping has taken the place of traditional commerce.


Even so, consumers always have more than one store to buy from. Traditional enterprises would not sit idly by and watch their retail channel being snatched away. During the "double 11" sales, major department stores in Beijing, Hangzhou, Xi'an, Chongqing, and other big cities have all launched big sales events to confront the challenge. In Chongqing, one department store introduced a bargain of "RMB 100 Yuan for RMB 230 Yuan" for designated products. Salesperson in the mall said that: "Online shops give 50 percent discounts during the "double 11" sales, we can do better than that here". Suning put on an even clever move. Its more than 2,000 online and offline stores launched simultaneous sales on November 11, and took advantage of online advertising. Li Bing, executive vice president of Suning.com, said that "we completed 3 million orders in three days. The synergy of online and offline efforts save us a large sum of marketing expense and reduce cost greatly".