面对沃尔玛，为什么亚马逊输的一败涂地？ | 经济学人商业
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Angela，“如果这纷乱的世界让我沮丧，我就去看看她们眼中的光芒。”
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Business | Schumpeter
商业｜熊彼特专栏
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Business | Schumpeter
商业｜熊彼特专栏
Why Walmart is trouncing Amazon in the grocery wars
群雄逐鹿超商王座，沃尔玛何以碾压亚马逊
Walmart is more of a threat to the e-commerce giant than the other way around
亚马逊剑指沃尔玛；沃尔玛：休想分走一杯羹
When Amazon announced the $13.7bn acquisition of Whole Foods Market in 2017, it came after some oddball attempts to strengthen its grocery business, some conceived by Jeff Bezos himself. One was to develop an “ice-cream truck for adults”, driving into neighbourhoods with lights flashing and horns honking, to sell porterhouse steaks, Shigoku oysters, Nintendo games and other goodies. It was quietly shelved. Another was to create a product so unique that only Amazon could supply it. The answer was the “single-cow burger”, a Wagyu beef patty made from the meat of one animal. You can still find them on its website—though they are now permanently out of stock.
2017年，亚马逊宣布斥资137亿美元收购全食超市（Whole Foods Market）。此前，亚马逊就曾为加强食品杂货业务做出过一些古怪的尝试，有些直接出自杰夫·贝佐斯（Jeff Bezos）之手，比如开发一种"成人冰淇淋车"，亮起灯光，鸣响喇叭，开进住宅区，车上卖上等牛排、滋谷生蚝、任天堂游戏机还有其他高级商品。后来就没人提起这个计划了。亚马逊还曾试图推出别人无法复制的独创产品，即 "单牛汉堡"，只用一头牛的肉制成的和牛肉饼。这个汉堡网站还在卖，只是显示永久缺货。
Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods signalled it would take a more conventional approach to the supermarket business. That is probably why, when the deal was announced, Amazon’s share price soared and those of its rivals, such as Walmart, fell. But since then Amazon has treated grocery more like a science experiment than an exercise in seduction, with weak results at Whole Foods and in other formats. Its best-known addition to the retail experience is the “just walk out” technology in physical stores, equivalent to its one-click shopping online. Yet cashierless supermarkets sound like something more beloved of geeks than grocers. What may cut down on time-wasting queues also minimises what some people love about shopping: the human interaction at the till, the hunter-gatherer instinct as they jostle at the meat counter, the Columbian exchange between fellow foodies at the spice rack.
亚马逊收购了全食超市，表明它将用更传统的方式经营超市业务。也许正因如此，交易宣布后，亚马逊股价飙升，竞争对手股价下跌，其中就有沃尔玛。但从那以后，亚马逊就跟个科技实验室一样，没有想着如何吸引顾客，所以在全食超市和其他业态上的成果都不甚理想。为进一步提升零售体验，亚马逊最为人熟知的科技就是“拿了就走”（Just Walk Out）”，也就是它的线下版“一键下单（one-click shopping）”。这种“无收银员超市”概念应该很受极客的欢迎，别人却未必买账。对某些人来说，不排队可能节省了点时间和精力，但购物的乐趣也没了：再也不能在收银台前跟人互动，看不到肉类柜台现代人类展示出的原始“狩猎采集”本性，也不能在调料货架前与各路美食家“哥伦布大交换”。
注释：
哥伦布交换（英语：Columbian Exchange），又称大交换（Grand Exchange），是一场东半球与西半球之间生物、农作物、人种（包括欧洲人与非洲黑人）、文化、传染病、甚至思想观念的突发性交流。它是人类历史上的跨越种族、地域的一件重要事件。1492年哥伦布首次航行到美洲大陆，不仅世纪性大规模航海的开始，更是旧大陆与新大陆之间联系的开始，引发各种生态上的巨大转变。历史学者艾弗瑞．克罗斯比（英语：Alfred W. Crosby）（Alfred W. Crosby）在1972年出版的著作《哥伦布大交换》（The Columbian Exchange）中，首先提出这个观念。
Amazon is trying to refresh the experience. Last year it recruited Tony Hoggett, a former executive from Tesco, a British supermarket chain, to bring grocery nous to a business hitherto obsessed with overhead cameras, QR codes and data collection. The Brit, who started out as a Tesco “trolley boy” aged 16, has a big job. When Schumpeter visited an Amazon Fresh store in Los Angeles recently, the fresh-meat and -fish counters were so barren they looked like part of a going-out-of-business sale. He bought one of the three rotisserie chickens on display out of sympathy, because he feared they had been there all day.
亚马逊就是想颠覆购物体验。这家公司一向痴迷于监控摄像头、二维码和数据收集，去年聘请了英国连锁超市乐购 （Tesco）前高管——托尼·霍格特（Tony Hoggett），为其引入杂货业务知识和经验。这个英国人——曾经那个在乐购以整理摆放购物车为生的16岁“手推车男孩”，被寄予了厚望。笔者最近去了洛杉矶的一家亚马逊生鲜店，鲜肉和鲜鱼柜台空空荡荡，像极了停业大甩卖。柜子里有三只烤鸡，怕是已经躺在那一整天，笔者出于同情买了一只。
Under Mr Hoggett, Amazon is trying to make the Fresh stores less soulless. Human cashiers and self-checkouts are back for those who prefer them. Whole Foods’ expertise is being used to rethink store location. It is part of an effort to make grocery shopping on Amazon as habitual as it is at a Walmart. Andy Jassy, the CEO, says it is aiming to build a “mass grocery format” commensurate with Amazon’s size. Yet if anything Walmart looks more likely to invade Amazon’s territory than the other way around.
在霍格特的带领下，亚马逊正努力让生鲜店重拾一点烟火气。人工收银员与自助结账回归，顾客按需挑选。重新部署商店选址时，有全食超市的经验专长。亚马逊一直希望将自己打造成顾客网购的第一选择，就像沃尔玛是实体店首选一样，而重选地址正是此战略的一部分。亚马逊CEO安迪·贾西（Andy Jassy）表示，公司致力于打造一种与亚马逊规模相匹配的“大规模食杂格局”。但是真要说会有什么动静，局面更可能是沃尔玛侵入亚马逊地盘，而不是亚马逊从沃尔玛市场分走一块蛋糕。
注释：
the other way round: Theopposite to some situation, opinion, plan, etc.
Neither firm thinks of itself as competing head-to-head with the other. But they are, because both have big growth ambitions. For Walmart, that means expanding its e-business beyond grocery into general merchandise, as well as attracting higher-income online customers. Both of these are Amazon’s forte. For Amazon, it means a bigger presence in grocery, both online—where food shopping still accounts for only about 10% of America’s $800bn supermarket business—and offline.
两家公司并不认为彼此在针锋相对。但这就是事实，毕竟双方都想扩大销售版图。对沃尔玛而言，这次火拼意味着将其电商业务从食品杂货扩展到范围更广的日用百货，还要吸引更高收入的线上顾客。而这两项正是亚马逊的拿手绝活。对亚马逊来说，与沃尔玛的比拼可以让它在食品杂货业务占据更大份额，无论线上还是线下。美国价值8000亿美元的商超业务中，线上食品购物目前仍只占10%左右。
In bricks-and-mortar, Walmart’s lead is huge. It has the largest footprint in America, with about 4,700 outlets, compared with 530 Whole Foods, 44 Amazon Fresh and 22 Amazon Go shops. Grocery accounts for most of its sales, whereas for Amazon they are a sliver. Its “everyday low prices” work: a survey by MoffettNathanson, a research firm, found equivalent products at Amazon Fresh were far pricier. Walmart’s speed of delivery matches Amazon’s.
沃尔玛在实体店运营上遥遥领先，在美国坐拥约4700家门店，覆盖面之广，无人能及，而亚马逊相形见绌，只有530家全食超市、44家生鲜超市（Amazon Fresh），以及22家无人生鲜超市（Amazon Go shops）。食品杂货是沃尔玛销售额的主力军，但只占亚马逊销售额的一小部分。沃尔玛的“天天低价”非常奏效：研究公司MoffettNathanson的一项调查发现，同等产品，亚马逊生鲜商店卖得贵得多。沃尔玛的配送速度也不输亚马逊。
注释：
EDLP (everyday low prices) means Everyday Low Price. Walmart follows this strategy in its revenue model. The purpose of this strategy is to captivate a larger number of audiences in order to gain higher profits. As their price is quite low, their sales volume is much higher than the competitors.
What Amazon lacks in stores, it hopes to make up for in membership of its Prime loyalty programme, which is estimated at 170m in America, compared with about 22m for Walmart+. Eventually, it hopes that online grocery shopping, combined with three different formats—Whole Foods for posh nosh, Fresh for general grub and Go for grab-and-go—will enable customers to buy everything they need via a single app. Amazon has two other advantages: a whopping marketplace platform for third-party sellers, which adds to the range of products available on its website, and an advertising business with a hefty $38bn of revenues last year, which supplements its supermarket business.
亚马逊希望借Prime会员忠诚计划补足线下经营劣势。亚马逊在美国的Prime会员估计在1.7亿，而沃尔玛的“Walmart+”会员仅约2200万。亚马逊的终极设想是，将线上食品杂货购物，以及线下三种不同的业态——提供高档食品的全食超市、提供普通食品的生鲜超市和提供即买即走食品的 无人生鲜超市整合到一起，让顾客能够用一个app就能实现一站式购物。亚马逊还有两大优势：一个是为第三方卖家提供庞大的平台，丰富其网站上的产品种类，另一个是去年高达 380 亿美元营业额的广告业务，是对其超市业务的补充。
Yet because shoppers like to see, feel and smell their groceries before buying them, the scarcity of stores is a problem. Dean Rosenblum of Bernstein, a broker, calculates that Amazon Fresh is accessible to just over a third of Americans. In contrast, 90% of them live within ten miles (16km) of a Walmart. If Amazon opened 50 new Fresh stores a year, in a decade’s time it would reach only the size of Whole Foods’ current tally. And that would be a “near criminally irresponsible use of Amazon capital”, Mr Rosenblum says. That view is spreading. Terry Smith, a British fund manager, recently dumped his Amazon stock, arguing that its move into grocery retail risked misallocating capital.
人们买东西时，都喜欢先看一看、摸一摸、闻一闻，可是亚马逊的线下门店太少了。据伯恩斯坦分析师Dean Rosenblum计算，亚马逊生鲜超市的销售足迹只能覆盖约三分之一的美国人，而90% 的美国人周围 10 英里（16 公里）以内就有一家沃尔玛。如果按每年新增 50 家Fresh 生鲜超市计算，得十年后，亚马逊才能达到沃尔玛全食超市现在的规模。Rosenblum先生表示“这是对亚马逊资本不负责任的使用，这么败家跟犯罪差不多了”。越来越多的人表示同意。英国基金经理特里·史密斯（Terry Smith）最近抛掉了手中的亚马逊，认为亚马逊进军食品杂货零售业，资金分配不当风险太大。
Moreover, Walmart appears to be making more headway with online selling and advertising than Amazon is with its real-world stores. Walmart’s online sales were estimated at $82bn last fiscal year, more than four times Amazon’s physical-store sales. It appears to be borrowing Amazon’s model of attracting third-party sellers to its site in order to increase the assortment of products, raise logistics revenue and boost advertising. Last year Walmart’s ad sales grew by 30%, to $2.7bn. That is still a fraction of Amazon’s total. But there is no reason why Walmart should not catch up, thinks Simeon Gutman of Morgan Stanley, an investment bank.
此外，沃尔玛的电商和广告业绩似乎超过了亚马逊的实体店业务。上一财年，沃尔玛线上销售额估计为820 亿美元，是亚马逊实体店销售额的四倍多。沃尔玛似乎正在借鉴亚马逊模式，吸引第三方卖家入驻网站，增加产品种类，提高物流收入，促进广告业务。去年，沃尔玛的广告销售额增长了 30%，达到 27 亿美元。虽然没法跟亚马逊广告收入总额相比，但投资银行摩根斯坦利（Morgan Stanley）的西蒙·古特曼（Simeon Gutman）认为，沃尔玛迟早能追上。
One-click M&A
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Amazon could leap up the league table by buying a large supermarket chain. Given the antitrust pressure on big tech, though, this is probably off the table. If a build-rather-than-buy approach is its only option, it will have to do a much better job of explaining how it will make this profitable. As it continues to waste time experimenting, Walmart is ably copying its best moves.
亚马逊大可以通过收购大型连锁超市，完成食杂业排行榜跃升。不过，大型科技公司头悬反垄断法之剑，想都不要想这条路。如果亚马逊只能打“自创而不收购”这一种牌，那它就不能像现在这样，必须得努力（向股东）解释清楚这个模式凭什么盈利。亚马逊“本性难移”，还在浪费时间实验来实验去，沃尔玛却将亚马逊独创的绝招尽数学来，好一个“师夷长技以制夷”。
Rain，蒙村小香菜
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观点|评论|思考
本周感想
天下之事，往往有循环往复之迹，兴盛了这么多年的线上电商业务，似乎已经有了线上、线下融合的趋势。
无论是亚马逊和沃尔玛，还是现在网传的京东全资收购永辉，都说明了一种迹象在慢慢浮现，电商不能只做线上。当然这里电商的优势不仅仅在于线上的诸多便利，更重要的一点是电商的经营管理模式比传统商业企业更具优势：更好的成本控制，更快的响应等等，都是传统线下企业所不具备的。幸好管理是可以学习的，而且成本也不高，所以当下能存活下来的传统企业在这些方面并不逊色于线上巨头。
在度过了十多年以价格为几乎唯一衡量标准的竞争后，在许多国家，尤其是电商发展比较成熟的国家里，人们的兴趣开始发生转向，人们希望拥有更好的用户体验，更加便捷的售前、售后服务，这一切都是纯电商企业所不具备的。京东看中的自然不是永辉的商业模式，而是1000多家门店以及由此衍生出来的快捷的服务和优秀的用户体验，试想如此场景再加之京东自营的优势，在对价格并非太敏感的用户群体中，或者是新鲜商品的购买群体中，会产生出如何的火花来。
用户的成长和变化是商家应该重点关注的点。这取决于商家的战略决策：当你以廉价商品来吸引顾客时，那么你就应该关注价格敏感用户的消费习惯和人群组成，他们的人数是可以被创造和挖掘出来的；而当你以消费体验和优质的消费服务来吸引顾客时，你的商品在整个销售环节内，就必须具有相当的差异性，以区别于廉价商品的服务。
显然京东和多多走的是两条不同的路，双方有着竞争优势的产品也会有所差异。所以京东意欲收购永辉只是想把他的差异化表现得更加明显，差距拉得更大。这是一种比较好的策略，因为价格始终有个低价，无论再怎么压榨，成本价就摆在那里，在没有发生重大技术变革时，这个价格是不会有太大变化的，而通过服务和口碑、品牌来提高商品的售价，却是没有上限的。
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愿景