New retail competition is fierce, smart vending machines will usher in a blowout development

Recently, Suning Store opened in Beijing. At the same time, Suning stated that the target for 2018 is 1,500, and it plans to achieve a layout of more than 5,000 in three years to provide consumers with services and experiences covering the last mile of community life. Combining with Ali’s Wanjia “Tmall Store” plan and JD’s Million Convenience Store plan, it can be seen that competition in this field is entering a fierce stage. In this case, investors and entrepreneurs with a keen sense of smell began to shift their eyes from the popular convenience store to the smart vending machine. This format is on the last mile of the track, and the strength is not lost to the convenience store, and the possibility of success is extremely high. At this stage, smart vending machines are still in the stage of spreading out to grab resources on a large scale. In recent years, the layout of the vending machine market is quietly increasing. For example, Wahaha's three-year order for 100,000 smart vending machines released in June last year shocked the industry. Nongfu Spring has been in the market since 2013, and now there are more than 20,000 smart vending machines nationwide. In this regard, industry insiders engaged in the operation of vending machines said: Although many parties have entered the market, vending machines are still in the incremental market, and there is still huge room for imagination. According to statistics from the China Chain Store and Franchise Association, the ratio of smart vending machines to convenience stores in the United States is 30:1, and the ratio in Japan is 75:1. The number of convenience stores in China is now 90,000. Even if it is based on the proportion of the United States, the number of domestic smart vending machines should be 2.7 million. But in fact, China is currently less than 200,000, and the vending machine market is far from being saturated. In addition, the retail industry in the next 10 years will accelerate the integration of online and offline, and new business models under the concepts of big data and artificial intelligence will emerge in an endless stream. The concentration of the retail industry will become higher and higher. The popularization of smart vending machines is only time problem. As Liu Qiangdong said, e-commerce is the fourth revolution, and 'cost, efficiency, experience' is still the core of the retail industry. In this sense, the essence of new retail is actually the optimization of the three categories of cost, efficiency and user experience. No matter how the retail industry changes, it will eventually expand around its essence. In terms of these three points, smart vending machines have certain advantages. Nowadays, the rent and labor costs of physical stores are gradually rising, and the gross profit obtained by offline operators will decrease under the condition of unchanged commodity prices. The smart vending machine greatly reduces rental costs due to its small footprint, and because it is unattended for 24 hours, it completely saves labor costs and brings great profits to operators. It is worth mentioning that now is the era of consumption upgrade, and people's needs are constantly changing. However, traditional vending machines have been unable to meet consumers' purchasing needs in terms of technology and food richness. This is precisely where the advantages of smart vending machines lie. Taking smart vending machines as an example, its online payment methods such as WeChat, Alipay, and UnionPay make it easier for consumers to pay and operators to operate more securely. According to the actual needs of the market, a variety of shipping channels have been designed and developed, and categories such as fresh food, red wine, and books have been added to meet the diverse needs of consumers in product selection and greatly improve user experience. In general, in the era of the Internet of Everything, change has become a general trend. For countless retailers, embracing the Internet is a general trend. The ceiling of smart vending machines is still very high, and they have natural advantages in terms of cost and efficiency. For merchants who want to get a share of the new retail battlefield, they can only seize the opportunity to attack decisively. The above information is provided by the beverage vending machine. Please mark the reprint