Around 2008, a website named Taobao was born, which swept the whole traditional sales industry with its convenient and fast electronic shopping mode. The booming e-commerce industry and electronic payment all come from this, and Alibaba behind Taobao has also become the largest e-commerce industry in China.
Although Alibaba is so magical now, it is not the real pioneer of e-commerce. As early as 1995, Amazon, the world's first e-commerce company, was formally established in the United States, and the founder of this company was Jeff Bezos, who later became the richest man in the world.
Amazon's third-order goal
In fact, at the beginning, Amazon only sold books, and even the founder Jeff Bezos' goal at that time was to make Amazon "the largest bookstore in the world". But perhaps even Bezos didn't expect that Amazon developed rapidly after its establishment. In less than two years, Amazon really became the largest bookstore in the world!
From this extremely rapid development, Bezos first felt the great potential of the e-commerce industry. Bezos quickly began to lay out other product systems without hesitation, and added the sales of retail products to Amazon's business projects. At this time, Amazon's business goal has become "the largest online retailer in the world", and in order to achieve this goal, Amazon has invested in overseas markets with a broader market while developing locally.
At the beginning of 2000, Bezos joined a novel management system of third-party cooperation for Amazon. At the same time, Amazon began to give users a better experience, and "the most customer-centric company" became the new goal of Amazon's development. At this time, Amazon is no longer a simple online retailer, and Amazon, which is constantly developing and expanding its business scope, has become a comprehensive service provider.
Today, Amazon is already a world-renowned e-commerce company, and its founder Jeff Bezos has become a billionaire worth more than $200 billion in the world.
Not acclimatized, the first in the world.
However, the world's number one e-commerce company was frustrated repeatedly when it entered the China market. Even last year, Amazon had no choice but to announce that its main business, e-commerce, had withdrawn from the China market. In fact, Amazon's experience in China is not without trace. To put it bluntly, foreign companies are not acclimatized to this situation.
Amazon entered China earlier than many people thought. As early as 2004, Amazon entered the China market. At that time, Amazon had successfully conquered the e-commerce markets of Canadian, British, French, Japanese and other countries, and was full of confidence in settling in China.
The ambitious Amazon bought the Joyo.com founded by Xiaomi founder Lei Jun at a high price of $75 million, and announced its arrival to the e-commerce practitioners in China at that time. At that time, domestic e-commerce was mixed, and Taobao and JD.COM were launched soon. It can be said that it should be easy for Amazon to occupy the China market at that time.
However, compared with the high-profile appearance, Amazon's rectification of Joyo is extremely slow. It was not until 20 1 1 that Qiyou officially changed its name from Joyo Amazon to Amazon China.
As a newcomer, Amazon's market research in China didn't really go deep, which led to its steady and slow development speed. For example, the renaming of Joyo took half a year at most in any company in China, while it took Amazon seven years to complete it.
In addition to the slow rectification, Amazon, which has always paid more attention to long-term development and product quality, did not take any corresponding measures when several other e-commerce price wars were fierce on 20 13. American companies have always paid more attention to the management and development of their own products, and didn't care about this simple and rude marketing method. But what Amazon didn't take into account was that for China people who were new to e-commerce platforms at that time and lacked trust in product quality, low prices could actually promote purchasing power.
The fundamental reason for this decision-making mistake is that Amazon didn't really trust China's team. According to CEO Liu, when he contacted Amazon China, he was surprised to find that the general manager of Amazon China was a foreigner who had never really lived in China. As the saying goes, knowing yourself and knowing yourself is invincible. How can a general be invincible?
The real decision-making power of Amazon China has always been in the hands of foreigners at Amazon headquarters. You know, China's market is changing very fast, and Amazon China, which is not authorized, has always been tied behind her back in the development of publicity, and has never even launched a large-scale advertisement. The reason is that the headquarters executives don't understand and trust Chinese advertising marketing, and they don't understand China, so they can't make correct business decisions for the market.
Finally, the problem of user experience. Amazon, which claims to pay great attention to the user experience, actually has a very fatal shortcoming, which is slow!
In the United States, which advocates slow life, if you buy a book on Amazon, you have to wait at least ten days from placing an order to receiving it, and sometimes even half a month to get the product you want. Amazon brought this slow delivery process to China intact.
However, this speed is obviously unbearable for fast-paced people in China. Other e-commerce platforms can deliver goods to customers in one day at the earliest, and the longest will not exceed five days. This obvious efficiency contrast also made fewer and fewer people choose Amazon, which eventually led to Amazon's withdrawal from China.
Peace does not forget danger, and survival does not forget death.
In fact, Amazon is not the only foreign company facing "acclimatization" in China. Before Amazon left, Yahoo, Google, Yi Bei and other companies also chose to quit the China market. Interestingly, most foreign enterprises leaving China are Internet companies, while entities such as Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Coca-Cola, KFC and McDonald's are thriving in China.
This is precisely because foreign Internet companies are often more comfortable and free than China. Like other non-internet companies, they advocate steady development, not reform and innovation. In China, Internet practitioners have been notoriously desperate in China. In order to avoid being eliminated by new technologies that may appear at any time, it is normal for Internet practitioners to work overtime and stay up late. In addition to 996, they sometimes even face 7 16. Behind this unreasonable overtime trend of foreigners is actually a sense of crisis engraved in the bones of those Internet giants.
At present, most of the big names in the Internet industry were born around the 1970s. When they started their business, they had no resources, no manpower and even no precedent to refer to. They have to grit their teeth, work hard and fight their way out, but when they choose the highly innovative industry, the road is doomed to be unstable forever.
Even now, Li Yanhong still gets up at five o'clock every morning to go to work. Ma Hua Teng is called "mail maniac" because he still sends work emails in the early hours of the morning. Ren Zheng Fei, the founder of Huawei, even put a small bed in his office to facilitate overtime.
In contrast, Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has to sleep eight hours a day, and arianna huffington, the first female director of Uber, even said, "If you want to succeed, sleep a little longer". Such a sharp difference is also an important reason why foreign Internet companies can't go on in China.
It is the knowledge of every Internet practitioner in China to be prepared for danger in times of peace, abstain from extravagance and thrift. Even though they have reached the first position in the industry, they are still afraid of being eliminated by the latecomers, so the Internet industry in China has always advocated innovation. The back waves of the Yangtze River push the front waves, and the new people are replaced by the old ones. If you always stick to the rules and can't learn to innovate and reform with the pace of the times, then even if you are a big global enterprise, you will be lost in the wave of the world sooner or later because of your arrogance.