The real-time retail outlet has arrived.

Consumers are accustomed to the online shopping experience of ordering and buying immediately, and this trend is irreversible. The demand for instant retail will continue to grow steadily in the future.

With the continuous shift of consumption scenes to online, instant retailing has ushered in new opportunities and gradually become a new engine to drive consumption growth. Different from traditional e-commerce, instant retailing mainly relies on physical stores, combined with the ability of 30-minute instant delivery, which not only provides consumers with the consumption experience of "everything can be home", but also promotes the deep integration of online and offline. The China E-Commerce Report 2021 recently released by the Ministry of Commerce shows that innovations in modes such as live e-commerce and instant retailing constantly stimulate consumption vitality, promote the upgrading of online retailing and help build a unified national market.

Everything can reach home.

Nowadays, the delivery box of take-away riders has not only met the needs of delivering food for diners, but has gradually become a "treasure box" that can respond to various consumer needs immediately. From fresh fruits and vegetables to daily necessities, from clothing, shoes and hats to books, audio and video, from medical beauty to digital products … More and more goods are being delivered to consumers through instant retail, and "everything can be delivered to home" has become an irresistible new trend.

"It is convenient and safer to place an order online." Cao Mengmeng, a girl from Guangzhou, usually likes to visit supermarkets. Since the supermarket chain near her home entered the take-away platform, she has switched to online consumption. "During the epidemic, it is still necessary to minimize going out to gather. From online ordering to home delivery, it usually takes about half an hour, and you don’t have to carry your own big bags." Cao Mengmeng said.

Thanks to the convenience brought by instant retailing, many young people like Cao Mengmeng are used to and fall in love with "ordering everything anytime, anywhere". According to the data released by Meituan, the retail platform, with the expansion of the resident brands from catering to daily chemical, maternal and child, digital and other categories, the number of goods sold on the platform and the unit price of customers have been continuously improved, and the average daily order volume of instant retail has exceeded 4.3 million. Among them, the immediate consumption demand of digital appliances, furniture and kitchenware, pet supplies and other categories has increased significantly. During the "double 11" this year, the transaction volume of digital take-out orders increased by 13 times year-on-year.

More goods, faster speed and less time are important reasons why consumers love instant retailing. "At 11 o’clock in the evening, I was in urgent need of envelopes, but most shops were closed. I don’t know how long it would take if I went out to buy them myself." Cao Mengmeng said, "I tried to place an order through take-away, and the rider delivered it in less than 20 minutes, and I realized that there were still many things that could be delivered by take-away."

The China Instant Retail Development Report 2022 released by China Chain Store & Franchise Association in November shows that the market scale of instant retail has increased by 81% in recent five years. It is estimated that in 2025, the scale of the instant retail open platform model will exceed the threshold of one trillion yuan, reaching about 1.2 trillion yuan. According to the report, with the change of consumption concept, consumers’ acceptance of instant retailing is getting higher and higher, and the instant consumption scene is constantly extending, from "daily purchase" to "big promotion purchase", "early adopter purchase" and "gift purchase", and consumers’ demands are increasingly diverse.

Li Jiwei, vice president of Meituan Research Institute, believes that during the epidemic, traditional e-commerce logistics was affected, and local offline consumption was also affected. It is inconvenient for consumers to go to stores to shop, and instant retailing has become an important way to smooth supply and demand. In his view, the rapid development of instant retail format mainly benefits from the rapid recovery and strong resilience of offline physical retail. "The abundant supply under the line provides the soil for instant retailing. The business form near consumers is enough to support their complete consumer demand, and with the delivery capacity of 30 minutes, the instant retail format will flourish. " Li Jiwei said.

From struggle to integration

Since the rise of e-commerce, the contest between online shopping and entity shopping has never stopped. However, in the past "double 11", this promotion originally belonging to the traditional e-commerce platform is becoming a double carnival of online platforms and physical stores.

"Ding, you have a new takeaway order, please handle it in time." At 8 o’clock in the morning, the first flight supermarket located in Nanding Road, Fengtai District, Beijing opened its doors to welcome customers, and orders from online flooded in. At the service desk, more than a dozen packages of sorted goods are waiting for the delivery clerk to pick them up. Wang Shufang, the sorter, pushes the shopping cart flexibly through the corridors, while quickly sliding the screen of the mobile phone to mark the sorted goods. "Sorters should not only be familiar with the placement of goods, but also check the appearance, quantity and expiration date to ensure the quality of goods." Wang Shufang said, his hand kept. The data shows that in the third quarter of 2022, the recruitment demand of sorters increased significantly, ranking ninth in the most wanted positions of enterprises, which became a vivid footnote of instant retailing.

In recent years, due to the impact of online e-commerce and reduced passenger flow, physical supermarkets have sought transformation. By accessing platforms such as JD.COM Home, Meituan Flash Shopping and Hungry, physical stores can share and undertake massive online consumer demand. Shi Junlei, deputy director of Beijing Shouhang Guoli Trading Co., Ltd. told reporters that since the online business was opened in March 2020, the service radius of supermarkets has been greatly expanded, and the sales volume has been rising. The sales of instant retail business accounted for 8% of the total sales this year, and the highest branch can reach 20%. According to reports, 47 stores of maiden voyage have been launched on the take-away platform, and enterprises also provide group service for surrounding residents through WeChat applet. "It is estimated that in the next few years, the proportion of online business will reach more than 30%." Shi Junlei said.

From competition to integration, instant retailing makes entity supermarkets an important part of online consumption map. During the "double 11" this year, more than 200,000 physical merchants such as supermarkets, convenience stores and mobile digital stores provided consumers in more than 1,800 counties (cities, districts) with convenient consumption experiences such as hourly shopping and minute shopping on platforms such as JD.COM’s arrival at home and JD.COM’s hourly shopping. From 2020 to now, the attitude of entity merchants to instant retailing has experienced a significant change from vacillation to full embrace. The person in charge of JD.COM Daojia Supermarket said that more and more physical businesses have seen the great role of instant retailing in stimulating consumption vitality and promoting the release of domestic demand. It is understood that online sales of head enterprises represented by Wal-Mart and Yonghui account for 30% to 40%.

No one likes to wait. Talking about the future of instant retailing, the person in charge said that consumers are accustomed to the shopping experience of online ordering and instant buying, and this trend is irreversible. In the future, the demand for instant retail will not cool down, but will continue to maintain steady growth.

Back street alley kaiwangpu

With the advantages of being closer to consumers, faster and richer in goods, instant retail offline entities have opened up a new market with rapid growth, and are also changing the business logic of physical retail.

Five people, three stores, the average monthly sales of 1 million yuan-this is the "small goal" that Yang Yantao, the manager of the "post-90 s", achieved in three years. On the day of "double 11", the reporter went to Haqu Pet Products Supermarket located in Huangshandian Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, and the continuous drizzle could not stop the riders who came to pick up the goods. In the store, Fang Yongkang, a clerk who is also a sorter, a shipper and a customer service, is busy packing and delivering. "It’s not the busiest time yet. The peak time for placing orders is usually from 8 pm to 2 am. The first thing I do when I go to work every day is to send the orders placed by customers after 0 am as soon as possible." Fang Yongkang said.

Different from traditional shops, this small shop with less than 100 square meters has neither neon signs nor exquisite decoration, and it is not in the downtown area, but lives in a back street. But it has nearly 1000 kinds of goods, involving all aspects of pet life, such as cat and dog food, pots and pans, insect repellent and so on. Looking at this small street, nearly 10 small shops with fresh food, grain and oil, tobacco and alcohol, and daily-use themes are located in it. This is another store form-pre-warehouse, which rises with the development of instant retailing.

"The location is expensive, and there are fewer customers in the store. This is a difficult problem faced by many retail practitioners." Li Lixun, founder of Shanghai Albatross Information Technology Co., Ltd., a retail service provider in the same city, said that in recent years, more and more physical stores have begun to fully access the e-commerce platform and become the front position of instant retail. The increasingly perfect distribution system has expanded the coverage of stores from the original 1 km to 5 km, and the location is no longer the decisive factor.

In May, 2020, Yang Yantao keenly grasped this opportunity and opened his first pet products front warehouse in Beijing. "Although pet products are not high-frequency consumption, they often have emergency needs. Instant retailing has a speed advantage over traditional e-commerce, which can just meet the needs of pet owners." According to Yang Yantao, during the peak period, the daily order volume is 70 to 80 orders, and the maximum daily sales can exceed 20,000 yuan. In the following two years, he tasted the sweetness and opened two new stores in Xicheng District and Tongzhou District of Beijing. Today, with only five people, Yang Yantao’s three stores are getting more and more prosperous. In the next step, Yang Yantao is ready. "I am more optimistic about the beauty category, and I plan to replace some low-frequency products to make room for the beauty category and improve the sales speed."

The density and breadth of local supply directly affect the consumer experience. The person in charge of JD.COM’s arrival at home said that physical merchants of all sizes, like the "capillaries" of instant retailing, provide differentiated supply services to consumers outside the traditional business hours, which not only meets the daily needs of consumers, but also takes into account the needs of some long-tailed goods, providing consumers with a better experience.

Like Yang Yantao, more and more offline merchants such as convenience stores, community stores and maternal and child stores are accelerating their "touching the net", during which they will also encounter new problems. "Many community stores and mom-and-pop stores still rely on small books to keep accounts, which is not only easy to make mistakes, but also difficult to cope with large-scale orders during peak traffic hours." Li Lixun said. Yang Yantao also has a deep understanding of this: "More and more goods increase the difficulty of warehousing and sorting, especially during the promotion period, multi-platform inventory needs to be updated in real time, which challenges the company’s digital ability."

Undoubtedly, instant retailing is injecting fresh blood into "consumption at your fingertips". Li Lixun said that instant retailing is of great significance for enriching local supply and meeting the gap of consumer demand. "For example, domestic brands such as Three Squirrels, Perfect Diary and Hua Xizi, which have emerged from the Internet, it is difficult for consumers to find physical shops offline, but through the instant retail platform, consumers can easily buy the goods they need." Li Lixun said.

Sprint the "last mile"

The popularity of instant retailing has arrived, and consumers’ requirements for the "last mile" are becoming more and more demanding, which is the "happiness trouble" that instant retailing encounters. According to the "Research Report on User Insight of C-End Platform in the Same City" released by iResearch, 62.8% of users can accept the delivery time within 30 minutes to 50 minutes, and more than 18% of users hope to receive the goods within 30 minutes of placing an order.

On the one hand, it is rich local supply, and on the other hand, it is massive consumer demand. Instant delivery shoulders the important mission of connecting supply and demand and integrating online and offline, and has become a "new infrastructure" for retail in the same city. The data shows that by the end of 2021, there were about 13 million online delivery agents in China, and the number of online delivery agents who "run on the road" every day has reached one million. Even so, in the face of the surge in orders caused by bad weather, platform promotion, annual holidays, hot events and other factors, the phenomenon of no one taking orders, overtime orders and full capacity still hinders instant retail.

Gao Qiang, head of Box Horse’s operation in Beijing, said that after the start of the World Cup, the order of crayfish+beer "watching partner combination" increased by more than five times; Recently, affected by the epidemic, Beijing consumers’ online orders for people’s livelihood goods peaked at three times the daily orders. "Due to the tight transportation capacity, half of the civilian staff of Box Horse’s Beijing headquarters have supported the positions of picking and packing, and the store staff also work as part-time delivery staff, and have reached an intention with many enterprises such as Haidilao and Yunhaiyao to supplement the staff as much as possible through the way of’ sharing labor’. At present, nearly 100 people have signed up." Gao Qiang said.

Ma Xiaosen, secretary-general of Beijing Electronic Commerce Association, said that the current job gaps are mainly tally clerks, distributors, cashiers, etc. Industry associations have helped e-commerce companies to build a "shared employment" exchange platform, and instant retail platforms such as box horses and US groups buy food, and are hungry. Cooperation with traditional service-oriented enterprises has alleviated the problem of insufficient capacity of online platforms to some extent.

It is worth noting that "insufficient transportation capacity" is not limited to "shortage of riders", and sprinting "the last mile" is not just as simple as sending goods from place A to place B, but it tests the overall scheduling ability of the whole process of instant retail.

According to the data of "2022 White Paper on Instant Retail Delivery Service", in 2021, the number of orders for instant delivery in China exceeded 30 billion, and the number of users exceeded 600 million. It is estimated that in 2022, it will exceed 40 billion orders and the number of users will exceed 750 million. The double growth of the order volume and the number of users makes the complexity of performance delivery rise continuously, and also promotes the innovative application of artificial intelligence, big data, Internet of Things and other technologies in warehousing, sorting, distribution and many other scenarios. Walking into the box mamen store, AI vision scale technology can accurately identify more than 1,000 kinds of dry fruits and vegetables in just 0.8 seconds, saving about three-quarters of waiting time; Smart price tag shortens the picking process from 15 minutes to 4 minutes; The suspended chain system installed on the ceiling can save the sorter tens of thousands of steps per day, but it can complete three times the previous workload …

"A perfect performance delivery service system is the supporting foundation of instant retail and the key to competition." Ma Xiaosen said that on the one hand, the real-time retail platform should establish a scientific forecasting and early warning mechanism, cut peaks and fill valleys, dynamically adjust the demand for transportation capacity, and accurately deal with the imbalance of orders in different regions and at different times. On the other hand, through digital empowerment, the whole link of offline stores, warehousing, picking and distribution is optimized, which will improve the efficiency of performance delivery and bring better experience to merchants, riders, consumers and other participants, and achieve a win-win situation in the industry.