Let me talk about my own opinion:
In the history of online marketing in the furniture industry, the earliest B2B business is HC Network, and many small and medium-sized enterprises have embarked on the road of online sales, opening small shops on large-scale online platforms and looking for overseas buyers. There are also many online furniture professional platforms similar to HC. In addition, there are some furniture "portal" websites developed for domestic demand, but there is no innovation in the mode, mainly focusing on enterprise and product display, only for the purpose of information exchange, and product transactions are still realized offline.
After that, larger or more innovative furniture enterprises began to establish their own official websites to promote enterprises and products through the websites. At the same time, furniture stores began to set up similar official website, introducing the relevant information of their own stores and the brand information they have settled in. But these websites only play a propaganda role, and there is no online trading of goods.
During this period, some websites tried the mode of "online display+experience store sales", such as "Home Easy Station", which was once rated as "Top 50 Enterprises with the Most Investment Value in China". However, this company, founded in 2004, filed for bankruptcy liquidation with the court in June 2009 due to the broken capital chain. Analyzing the reasons for its failure, the failure of the model may be the most important. The model of "home improvement company+group purchase network+fence mall" takes the settlement center of the experience hall as the core business category, which is no different from the traditional store, and takes low price as the only selling point, which deviates from the industry essence of low standardization of home building materials and paying attention to personal experience in space (touch texture, smell and color).
But recently, with the maturity of online payment means and tools and the rapid rise of online shopping, some furniture enterprises and furniture stores have broken through the original online marketing model and made remarkable achievements around the online sales and operation of websites. The following two cases of online shop and furniture online shop are analyzed for readers' reference.
2. Two modes of furniture network marketing.
2. 1 From traditional shopping malls to online shopping malls-a century of transformation
As an established furniture store established in 1999, HOBA Home Chain Enterprise (hereinafter referred to as HOBA) has two major home retail brands-Hoba Home and Meiteng Home, and a brand-new home business model-Hoba Life.
By the end of 2009, nearly 20 large household chain stores have been opened in large and medium-sized cities across the country, with 1600 manufacturers and 3,500 dealers.
Before the global financial crisis in 2008, there was no essential difference between the business model of hundreds of years and other furniture hypermarkets, and the main profit came from the rental income of shops. But different from other stores, it has its own century-old R&D department, which is responsible for formulating the company's furniture product development strategy, development plan and annual R&D plan, and organizing the implementation of the overall work of the company's furniture product OEM/ODM. This also laid the foundation for hundreds of years of product research and development and procurement to go online.
The decline in consumers' income caused by the financial crisis has made people pay more attention to attracting the attention of post-80 s consumers by online means for hundreds of years, because online shopping, a cost-effective, convenient and fast means, is exactly what these consumers value. At the end of 2008, Shenzhen Luohu network experience flagship store was officially launched.
At present, there are tens of thousands of household goods sold online in Hobalife online mall, all of which are coded according to their own centuries-old system, and the scale is equivalent to a large-scale physical mall with 65438+ 1 100 million square meters. The Century Online Mall Experience Center covers an area of 1.5 million square meters, which is an offline entity display platform for furniture, a special commodity.
The products of Haobainian Online Mall are mainly aimed at the post-80s consumers aged 25-35, and are mainly fashionable, simple and affordable modern style products. However, the products operated by Haobainian Home Store are mainly French court, Italian design and Nordic simplicity, aiming at middle and high-end consumers with purchasing power. Therefore, the two do not affect each other, do not overlap each other, and are complementary.
Compared with physical stores, online shopping malls have a lower price advantage. 30% of the goods in the online shopping mall in good hundred years are produced by ODM and OEM, which can minimize the production cost; More than 60% of goods are purchased by massive orders, which squeezes out the profit bubble of middlemen and greatly reduces the procurement cost; Network virtual exhibition can also effectively save venue rent, utilities, labor and other costs. Therefore, the price of goods sold in online shopping malls is 30% ~ 50% lower than that in the market, which is also the most attractive place for online shopping compared with physical stores. For example, its Nordic-style four-piece bedroom set costs only 3699 yuan, including1.8m bed,1.82m wardrobe, bedside table and dresser. If customers place an order online, they can pay online through inter-bank payment, Alipay, Tenpay, plus the freight from Shenzhen to designated cities across the country, or pick up the goods at the experience store. The website promises "three guarantees" of product quality within 90 days, and free maintenance service within 180 days. However, at present, only on-site installation services are provided in Shenzhen, Shanghai, Hangzhou and Zhengzhou.
According to Hang Yong, the marketing director of Haobainian Home Chain Co., Ltd., the sales of this channel are still in the exploratory stage, and the sales are limited to the whole format of Haobainian, but Haobainian pays more attention to this sales channel in order to make up for the existing channels and seize the opportunities in the future e-commerce wave.
"There are seven value chains that have existed for hundreds of years, including R&D, procurement, distribution, e-commerce, brand joining, logistics and investment promotion. Through this value chain, you will find that we put the traditional profit from attracting investment in the last position of corporate profit sources. " Hang Yong said that the first six value links are aimed at the century-old own brand. Rebuilding its value chain through hundreds of years of online shopping malls is a direction worth exploring in furniture circulation industry.
2.2 Online shopping is crazy-Qumei's online map
The domestic high-end brand Qumei Furniture (hereinafter referred to as Qumei) is always the first in the industry, and so is online marketing. We can look at Qumei's footprint on the Internet: Qumei Enterprise Website-Qumei Mall-Qumei Taobao Mall Store.
Like most furniture enterprises, the main function of Qumei enterprise website is the overall image and brand promotion of the enterprise, as well as the display of a full range of products, and it does not have the ability of real-time online trading. For consumers, through this website, they can only have a preliminary impression of the brand, and the actual product experience and consumption can only be completed in physical stores, so the role of such websites in marketing is extremely limited.
In the face of the impact of the financial crisis on traditional channels, Qumei decided on the channel collaborative e-commerce project in June 2008. After 7 months of research and demonstration, Qumei's "e-world" online mall was launched in June 2009. According to the introduction of China B2B Research Center, Qumei's "e-World" online mall is the first online direct selling product sales platform established by domestic independent furniture brand manufacturers, which has opened an innovative road for online direct selling of brands in China furniture industry.
Qumei Online Mall completely broke the static brand promotion mode of corporate websites, realized online real-time virtual shopping, and cooperated with traditional retail outlets to realize a series of after-sales services such as commodity distribution, installation and exchange. Zhao, president of Qumei, said: "This e-commerce platform is not simply to buy a shirt or a book and do it by mail; Now we are cooperating with nearly 700 experience stores in 175 cities across the country to carry out e-commerce work. This is called' click and mortar'. "
Compared with the product series mainly for middle and high-end groups operated by physical stores, Qumei has developed fashionable and simple products specifically for young consumers in online shopping malls, realizing product differentiation and enriching Qumei's entire product series. At the same time, it adopts the mode of batch centralized production, reduces the cost from the source of production, cancels intermediate links, pushes the factory direct selling price to the network special price platform, reasonably coordinates the interests of dealers, gives play to the advantage of "channel synergy" and realizes the low price on the network. The model of "famous products at low prices" is also the biggest advantage and highlight of online shopping to attract consumers. According to the statement made by Zhao, president of Qumei, at the Shanghai Exhibition in September of the same year, the turnover growth rate of online shopping malls reached more than 30%.
3. Views
Furniture online marketing and furniture group purchase networking are still in the initial stage, and online furniture exhibition mall, as a sales platform, can not replace the location of physical stores overnight. Even IKEA, which has tried online marketing abroad for many years, is afraid to open an online shopping platform in China. Although there are still many difficulties in online furniture marketing, it will become an inevitable trend in the near future.
When the post-80s and post-90s become the mainstream consumer groups, we will target those consumers who grew up with computers and networks, and their consumption patterns will definitely be different from those of the older generation. Although furniture is a product that attaches great importance to experience in sales and physical store sales are indispensable, how to expand brand influence through the network is something that furniture enterprises must pay attention to.