The big guy platform "really happy" revision, Gome traffic anxiety to be solved

China Times (www.chinatimes.net.cn) reporter Lu Xiao, trainee reporter Yan Xiaohan reported in Beijing

In this year's first pre-sale live broadcast of Singles' Eleven, 240 million people watched the anchor Wei Ya's live broadcast for more than 14 hours, although Li Jiaqi's live broadcast time and the number of shelves were less than Wei Ya, but the 250 million viewers were still higher than the latter. Such a time node and traffic are enough to make the platform that does e-commerce including Gome move.

On October 21, Gome's "True Happiness" APP (hereinafter referred to as "True Happiness") was launched on the second day of this year's Singles' Day pre-sale. According to the "China Times" reporter, this revision, True Happiness focused on creating two major sections of "shopping + music". On the second day of the press conference, Gome Retail's share price fell by 1.16% to a total market capitalization of HK$28.693 billion.

After the return of the soul figure Huang Guangyu, Gome seems to be ending the state of "keeping the business" and beginning to regain its sharp edge.

Change acceleration

At this press conference, the host Huang Guangyu occupied the absolute protagonist, and a group of executives from Wanda, Haier, Hisense, Fosun Group and other enterprises were lined up on both sides with Huang as the center.

When asked about his expectations for true happiness in the future, Huang Guangyu unfolded a piece of paper that he had held in his hand since he took the stage, and read out a series of wishes that sounded more like slogans: on the true happiness APP, really choose to close your eyes to buy, strictly choose to buy with confidence, and play a wonderful game.

Huang Guangyu's final speech included the main content of this really happy upgrade and revision. Gome said that the upgrade and revision of the True Happiness APP mainly upgrades the content, functions and interfaces of goods and services from the two dimensions of "shopping and pleasure". It is reported that during the Double Eleven period, True Happiness will launch the trial operation of the "Real Selection Products" and "Strict Selection of Good Stores" channels.

The "China Times" reporter found that when the True Happiness APP is opened, the main page is the "Music" section, which includes the focus of the revision - "List" and "Event". Under "Recommendation", there are "short videos", "notes", "little tiger machines" and other categories, and there are only more than ten video content in some classifications, and some content also intersects with other section content.

In terms of promoting the upgrading of "le", Gome chose the form of "race", but the current time is still short, and no obvious effect has been seen. Taking the currently launched event "Everything Can Play" as an example, even with the participation of stars Lang Lang, the number of participants is only 26. However, Gome believes that the select tournament is expected to become a new traffic detonator in the future.

Traffic, for Gome, which is slightly backward on the road of e-commerce, may be the most important part of it. And the series of actions that will revise the true happiness APP this time is not difficult to see the intention behind the national beauty - to attract and retain users.

Zhuang Shuai, founder of Bailian Consulting, analyzed the "China Times" reporter that Gome chose to hold a variety of events mainly to enhance interaction with users, and its path and method are feasible. "Because Gome has highly sticky users offline, and there are offline stores that also provide scenes for holding events, in addition, the activities themselves have the attribute of sharing."

Behind the real happiness is Gome's retail entertainment layout. Zhuang Shuai believes that Gome's entertainment consumption strategy has formed its own characteristics and formed differentiated competition with other e-commerce platforms. However, retail entertainment is not the first of Gome, in 2016, Taobao Live has been online, in 2017, Kuaishou began to try e-commerce with goods.

Zhang Shule, a veteran Internet industry observer, analyzed the "China Times" reporter that for Gome, it does not have a first-mover advantage in retail entertainment, nor does it have historical precipitation. How to form differentiation, how to ensure the time window when the traffic is invincible, and how not to be borrowed by other live streaming platforms are all great and unavoidable tests.

Missed e-commerce

In the eyes of the outside world, a company's name change or revision is for the sake of change.

In 2017, Gome renamed "Gome Electrical Appliances" to "Gome Retail", and the name change was also considered by the industry to be an upgrade from a single retail operation to a full-category retail business; in January 2021, Gome renamed the Gome retail APP to "True Happiness"; more than nine months later, True Happiness underwent a comprehensive revision. Changes in Gome seem to be accelerating.

Zhuang Shuai believes that the home appliance retail industry is the foundation of Gome, before Gome focused its main battlefield on offline sales, but as consumers turned online, Gome also began to upgrade to "online + offline". However, he believes that during Huang Guangyu's absence from Gome, Gome has been in a state of "keeping business", which has led to the lack of strength and depth of Gome's decision-making, and the efficiency of decision-making is not high enough, so Gome has missed the market opportunity.

In the market share of home appliance retailers, Gome is being overtaken by its peers.

According to a report released by the China Electronics Information Industry Development Research Institute, among the retailers in the Chinese home appliance market in the first half of 2020, Gome occupied 5.37% of the market share, the top three were Jingdong with 28.86%, Suning with 21.76% and Tmall with 14.2%. From the perspective of income, Gome's revenue has a big gap with Suning, JD.com, etc. In the first half of 2021, Gome's retail revenue was 26 billion yuan, Suning Tesco was 93.6 billion yuan, and JD.com was 456.9 billion yuan.

In addition, since 2017, Gome's net profit on books has been negative for four consecutive years, and it is still in the first half of 2021, with a total loss of more than 16.8 billion yuan in four and a half years.

According to the 2021 semi-annual report released by Gome, Gome completed about 75,000 live broadcasts during the reporting period through entertainment and event marketing, reaching more than 38 million users. In contrast, when Kuaishou and Douyin tried to live stream goods in 2018, the number of daily active users had exceeded 100 million.

Zhang Shule told the "China Times" reporter that Gome has lagged behind step by step in the field of e-commerce, and if there is no new road of its own, it will inevitably be opened up to a greater gap or even eliminated. With the expansion of e-commerce platforms offline, including the emergence of formats such as community group buying, the offline retail market of the FMCG category is also disintegrating, while the offline retail market is more difficult due to the flattening of e-commerce channels.

He believes that in the current online and offline attacks of e-commerce, there are not many deep-water areas left, most of which are concentrated in areas such as home improvement and home furnishing that require strong on-site experience, and with the gradual expansion of VR, AR technology, etc., perhaps the solid ice of online and offline will also melt. There are fewer and fewer areas and times that can make Gome trial and error.