ECONOMIST: Why retailers everywhere should look to China
經濟學人：為什麼各地的零售商都應該把目光投向中國
That is where they will see the future of e-commerce
這是他們看到電子商務未來的地方
Over the past ten months most people in the rich world have participated in the biggest shopping revolution in the West since malls and supermarkets conquered suburbia 50 years ago. The pandemic has led to a surge in online spending, speeding up the shift from physical stores by half a decade or so. Forget the chimney; Christmas gifts in 2020 came flying through the letterbox or were dumped on the doorstep. Workers at a handful of firms, including Amazon and Walmart, have made superhuman efforts to fulfil online orders, and their investors have made supernormal profits as Wall Street has bid up their shares on euphoria that Western retailing is at the cutting edge.
在過去的十個月裡，富裕世界的大多數人都參與了自50年前商場和超市徵服郊區以來西方最大的購物革命。這場流行病導致在線消費激增，使實體店的轉變速度加快了大約五年。忘了煙囪；2020年的聖誕禮物要麼從信箱裡飛出來，要麼被扔在門階上。包括亞馬遜(Amazon)和沃爾瑪(Walmart)在內的幾家公司的員工已經做出了超人的努力來完成在線訂單，他們的投資者也獲得了超常的利潤，因為華爾街在西方零售業處於領先地位的喜悅中抬高了他們的股價。
Yet as we explain this week (see article) it is in China, not the West, where the future of e-commerce is being staked out. Its market is far bigger and more creative, with tech firms blending e-commerce, social media and razzmatazz to become online-shopping emporia for 850m digital consumers. And China is also at the frontier of regulation, with the news on December 24th that trustbusters were investigating Alibaba, co-founded by Jack Ma, China’s most celebrated tycoon, and until a few weeks ago its most valuable listed firm. For a century the world’s consumer businesses have looked to America to spot new trends, from scannable barcodes on Wrigley’s gum in the 1970s to keeping up with the Kardashians』 consumption habits in the 2010s. Now they should be looking to the East.
然而，正如我們本周所解釋的(見文章)電子商務的未來是在中國，而不是在西方。它的市場要大得多，也更有創意，科技公司將電子商務、社交媒體和網絡購物融為一體，成為8.5億數字消費者的網上購物中心。中國也處於監管的前沿，12月24日有消息稱反壟斷機構正在調查阿里巴巴，該公司由中國最著名的大亨馬雲共同創立，直到幾周前還是其最有價值的上市公司。一個世紀以來，世界消費者企業一直指望美國發現新趨勢，從20世紀70年代箭牌口香糖上的可掃描條形碼到21世紀10年代卡戴珊的消費習慣。現在他們應該把目光投向東方。
China’s lead in e-commerce is not entirely new. By size, its market overtook America’s in 2013—with little physical store space, its consumers and retailers leapfrogged ahead to the digital world. When Alibaba listed in 2014 it was the world’s largest-ever initial public offering. Today the country’s e-retailing market is worth $2trn, more than America’s and Europe’s combined. But beyond its sheer size it now stands out from the past, and from the industry in the West, in several crucial ways.
中國在電子商務方面的領先地位並不是全新的。就規模而言，它的市場在2013年超過了美國——在幾乎沒有實體店的情況下，它的消費者和零售商向前躍進到了數字世界。2014年阿里巴巴上市時，這是全球有史以來規模最大的首次公開募股。如今，中國的電子零售市場價值2萬億美元，超過美國和歐洲的總和。但除了其龐大的規模之外，它現在在幾個關鍵方面都不同於過去和西方的行業。
For a start it is more dynamic. In the past few years new competitors, including Meituan and Pinduoduo, have come of age with effervescent business models. One sign of fierce competition is that Alibaba’s share of the market capitalisation of the Chinese e-commerce industry has dropped from 81% when it listed to 55% today. Competition has also led e-commerce and other tech firms to demolish the boundaries between different types of services that are still common in the West. Point and click are passé: online-shopping platforms in China now blend digital payments, group deals, social media, gaming, instant messaging, short-form videos and live-streaming celebrities.
首先，它更有活力。在過去的幾年裡，新的競爭對手，包括美團和拼多多，已經成熟，擁有活躍的商業模式。激烈競爭的一個跡象是，阿里巴巴在中國電商行業市值中的份額已從上市時的81%降至今天的55%。競爭還導致電子商務和其他科技公司打破了在西方仍然普遍存在的不同類型服務之間的界限。點擊即通:中國的在線購物平臺現在融合了數字支付、團購、社交媒體、遊戲、即時消息、短格式視頻和名人直播。
The obvious, multi-trillion-dollar question is whether the Chinese model of e-commerce will go global. As has been the case for decades, Silicon Valley’s giants still tend to underestimate China. There are few direct links between the American and Chinese e-commerce industries, partly owing to protectionism on both sides (Yahoo sold much of its stake in Alibaba, far too early, in 2012). And Western firms have long been organised in cosy, predictable silos. So Visa specialises in payments, Amazon in e-commerce, Facebook in social media, Google in search, and so on. The main source of uncertainty in e-commerce has been just how many big traditional retailers will go bust—over 30 folded in America in 2020—and whether a few might manage the shift online, as Walmart and Target have.
一個顯而易見、價值數萬億美元的問題是，中國的電子商務模式是否會走向全球。幾十年來，矽谷的巨頭們仍然傾向於低估中國。美國和中國的電子商務行業之間幾乎沒有直接聯繫，部分原因是雙方的保護主義(雅虎在2012年過早出售了其在阿里巴巴的大部分股份)。西方公司長期以來被組織在舒適、可預測的筒倉中。所以Visa專注於支付，亞馬遜專注於電子商務，Facebook專注於社交媒體，谷歌專注於搜索，等等。電子商務不確定性的主要來源是有多少大型傳統零售商將會破產——2020年美國有超過30家零售商倒閉——以及是否有少數零售商可以像沃爾瑪和塔吉特百貨那樣在網上實現這一轉變。
Yet however safe and siloed Western e-retailing may appear to be, it is now unlikely that it will become the world’s dominant mode of shopping. Already, outside rich countries, the Chinese approach is gaining steam. Many leading e-commerce firms in South-East Asia (Grab and Sea), India (Jio), and Latin America (Mercado Libre) are influenced by the Chinese strategy of offering a 「super-app」 with a cornucopia of services from noodle delivery to financial services. The giant consumer-goods firms that straddle the Western and Chinese markets may transmit Chinese ideas and business tactics, too. Multinationals such as Unilever, L』Oréal and Adidas make more revenue in Asia than in America and their bosses turn to there, not to California or Paris, to see the latest in digital marketing, branding and logistics.
然而，無論西方電子零售看起來多麼安全和孤立，它現在都不太可能成為世界上最主要的購物模式。在富裕國家之外，中國的方法已經獲得了動力。東南亞(Grab and Sea)、印度(Jio)和拉丁美洲(Mercado Libre)的許多領先電子商務公司都受到了中國戰略的影響，即提供從麵條配送到金融服務等豐富服務的「超級應用」。橫跨西方和中國市場的大型消費品公司也可能傳播中國的理念和商業策略。聯合利華、歐萊雅和阿迪達斯等跨國公司在亞洲的收入高於美國，他們的老闆轉向亞洲，而不是加州或巴黎，以了解數字營銷、品牌和物流的最新動態。
Already, Chinese characteristics are emerging in the retail heartlands of the West, partly as a result of the pandemic. The silos are breaking down as firms diversify. Facebook is now promoting shopping services on its social networks, and engaging in 「social commerce」, including in live-streaming and the use of WhatsApp, for messaging between merchants and shoppers. In December Walmart hosted its first live shopping event within TikTok, a Chinese-owned video app in which it hopes to buy a stake. In France in the past quarter the sixth-most-downloaded e-commerce app was Vova, linked to Pinduoduo’s founder. And new entrants may finally make progress in America—the share price of Shopify, a platform for Amazon exiles and small firms, has soared so that it is now valued at more than $140bn.
中國特色已經在西方的零售中心出現，部分原因是這種流行病。隨著企業多元化，筒倉正在瓦解。Facebook現在正在其社交網絡上推廣購物服務，並參與「社交商務」，包括直播和使用WhatsApp在商家和購物者之間傳遞信息。去年12月，沃爾瑪在TikTok舉辦了首次現場購物活動，這是一個中國人擁有的視頻應用，沃爾瑪希望在其中購買股份。過去一個季度，法國下載量第六大的電子商務應用是Vova，與平多多的創始人有關。新進入者可能最終會在美國取得進展——為亞馬遜流亡者和小公司服務的平臺Shopify的股價飆升，目前估值超過1400億美元。
This shift to a more Chinese-style global industry promises to be excellent news for consumers. Prices would be lower, as China has seen fierce discounting by competing firms. Choice and innovation would probably grow. Even so, Chinese e-commerce has flaws. In a Wild West climate, fraud is more common. And there are those antitrust concerns. It is tempting to see the crackdown on Mr Ma as just another display of brutal Communist Party power (see article). It may partly be that, but China’s antitrust regulators are also keen to boost competition. That means enforcing interoperability, so that, for example, payments services on one e-commerce platform can be used seamlessly on a rival one. And it means preventing e-commerce firms from penalising merchants who sell goods in more than one place online. So far American and European trustbusters have been ineffectual at controlling big tech, despite a flurry of lawsuits and draft laws at the end of 2020. They, too, should study China, for a sense of where the industry is heading and how to respond.
這種向更具中國風格的全球產業的轉變有望成為消費者的好消息。價格會更低，因為中國已經看到競爭公司的激烈折扣。選擇和創新可能會增長。即便如此，中國電子商務還是有缺陷的。在狂野西部的氣候下，欺詐更為常見。還有這些反壟斷問題。人們很容易將對馬英九的鎮壓視為共產黨殘暴權力的又一次展示文章).部分原因可能在於此，但中國反壟斷監管機構也熱衷於促進競爭。這意味著加強互操作性，例如，一個電子商務平臺上的支付服務可以無縫地用於另一個平臺。這意味著防止電子商務公司懲罰在網上多個地方銷售商品的商家。到目前為止，美國和歐洲的反壟斷者在控制大型技術方面一直無效，儘管在2020年底有一系列的訴訟和法律草案。他們也應該研究中國，了解該行業的發展方向以及如何應對。
There is a pattern to how the West thinks about Chinese innovation. From electronics to solar panels, Chinese manufacturing advances were either ignored or dismissed as copying, then downplayed and then grudgingly acknowledged around the world. Now it is the Chinese consumer’s tastes and habits that are going global. Watch and learn.
西方對中國創新的看法有一個模式。從電子產品到太陽能電池板，中國製造業的進步要麼被忽視，要麼被斥為抄襲，然後被淡化，然後被全世界不情願地承認。現在，中國消費者的品味和習慣正在走向世界。邊看邊學。
本文章英文原文來自經濟學人，不代表公眾號立場
英文文章及圖片來源：
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/01/02/why-retailers-everywhere-should-look-to-china
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