Click to read the original text for details Terminal is King, Channel Wins Terminal is king, channel wins, which once made many industry brands successful, such as Wahaha in beverages, Jingjiu and Laocunzhang in baijiu, Bull in sockets, Haitian in condiments, and OPPO in mobile phones. The terminal is the very end of the sales channel, the final port where products reach consumers and complete transactions, and the place for face-to-face transactions and displays. Therefore, seizing the terminal is crucial for enterprises. The terminal-is-king sales model has not died but evolved. Whether the rooster crows or not, the day will dawn. Professor Liu Chunxiong summarized it as: Mainstream decline, but still mainstream. Leading brands in various industries are using internet tools + terminals, digitalization + terminals to upgrade and optimize existing terminals, making terminal operations more efficient. In Gree Electric's 2020 live streaming by chairperson Dong Mingzhu, the first session only achieved sales of 223,500 yuan. However, when Dong Mingzhu streamed with 30,000 offline stores, the full-day sales exceeded 6.5 billion yuan. This time, the logic changed from a live streaming based on offline large-scale group buying and auctions to a distribution logic that mobilized channel forces for channel live streaming. Specifically, it was a collaboration between the company and offline exclusive stores. Gree used offline distributors to drive traffic, filtering out potential buyers into the live room to increase online conversion rates. After transactions in the live room, the headquarters shared profits based on the traffic and sales brought by each distributor. Additionally, for users who purchased through live streaming but were not directly brought by distributors, orders were allocated to regional distributors based on the user's location, who provided services and received service fees. Without the traffic from 30,000 offline stores, Dong Mingzhu's live streaming could not have achieved 6.5 billion in the fourth session. Brands without offline roots are rootless; without online, they cannot run fast. Therefore, terminal is king, and offline rooting remains crucial for brands. From the perspective of brand owners, analyzing the current situation of terminals based on high-involvement and low-involvement products, and whether they have self-operated brand stores, there are differences in operations due to different industries and product attributes: First, in terms of terminal sales, terminal sales depend on the radius of the store's reach, that is, location, location, location. Also, the number of SKUs in the store and the store's cognitive relationships. Second, in terms of terminal transaction models, generally, attention is paid to pre-transaction sales action design (such as personnel ground promotion or promotional activities to attract traffic, in-store traffic flow design, product display, in-store visual merchandising), but the relationship ends once the transaction is completed. Terminal problems are also mentioned in 'Refuting the Theory of Terminal Extinction': First, terminal sales decline; second, terminal sales functions weaken, push functions diminish, and store owners lack motivation. Low-involvement products without stores, such as beer, beverages, condiments, and instant foods, face problems mainly due to the contradiction between channel operation models and terminal contribution. With product oversupply in various industries, brand owners are desperately squeezing into various channels, and the high fragmentation of channels has led to traditional brand owners who mainly rely on terminal operations finding that their original channel operation models and investments do not meet expectations, and no growth or slow growth are problems. Brand owners using exclusive stores as their channel operation model mainly face issues of no traffic or low traffic, low sales, unstable and unsustainable transaction relationships, and lack of operation. Terminal is king, what is the next direction? Is New Store Commerce a new way out? Store commerce is commercial transactions with the store as the origin. The biggest bottleneck of store commerce is the limitation of physical space. First: location. Good locations naturally have good traffic; poor locations have poor traffic. Of course, good locations also have high rent, and usually, store traffic comes from the store's physical radius. Second: the store's SKU capacity, store area, and shelves. Regardless of size, they are always limited and cannot be infinitely expanded. Every inch of space is precious, so stores must maintain the best product mix. At the same time, the relationship between the store and customers is weak; the relationship ends when the transaction ends, and without a relationship, there is no transaction. Stores can only passively wait for customers to come, completing first purchases or repeat purchases. Even traditional offline promotions like distributing flyers or holding events have little effect because all promotions are effective based on relationship management. New Store Commerce stands from the brand owner's perspective, takes consumers as the origin, terminals as the fulcrum, aims to improve satisfaction for both stores and consumers, and empowers terminals to reach consumers through mini-programs, communities, BC integration, and scenario experiences. It establishes connections with consumers, strengthens their sense of participation, activates existing stock, achieves incremental growth, and realizes high yields for terminal stores. Based on the above problems, New Store Commerce aims to solve the store's spatial issues (location limitations, SKU quantity limitations), time issues (transaction time limitations), and transaction relationship issues (only relying on the store's location-based traffic, not knowing where customers are, and lacking methods to establish connections). In one sentence, it reconstructs the relationship between people, goods, and places, efficiently empowers terminals, serves consumers, and meets the evolving new needs of shoppers in the current environment. New Store Commerce's Proposed Views 1. Dual Stores, Dual Traffic: Offline Store + Cloud Store, Online Traffic + Offline Traffic. Store space is limited and cannot accommodate too many long-tail products, but online stores can hold unlimited. Dual stores and dual traffic refer to offline and online stores, online and offline traffic, and interactive traffic between them. Offline traffic comes from location-based natural traffic, ground promotion personnel, and offline promotional activities. Online traffic sources include headquarters-empowered traffic (headquarters live streaming, official accounts, brand promotions, etc.), secondary fission of offline store traffic online, traffic obtained from offline stores' online operations, and traffic from online advertising. 2. Dual Scenarios: To Store + To Home. To store involves planned or impulse consumption, attracting consumers to the store, and accelerating transactions through in-store experience design, service, and scenarios. To store mainly addresses consumption experience. To home means delivering products to the home, improving shopping convenience. To home services have several forms: first, orders from WeChat groups built by the store or previous regular customers, delivered by store staff or third-party logistics (such as Meituan or errand services). Second, listing on third-party platforms (community group buying platforms, community e-commerce platforms), leveraging third-party traffic. 3. Dual IP: Brand IP + Personal IP. Store customers mainly come from three types: acquaintances, semi-acquaintances, and strangers. They come from the conversion of brand IP and personal IP traffic. Brand IP refers to product brand or store brand, and personal IP refers to the store owner or the store's top salesperson. The benefit of dual IP is increasing traffic, stacking brand and personal traffic, endorsing each other, and increasing the possibility of transactions. 4. Dual Experience: In-Store Experience + Online Experience. The biggest advantage of the store is experience. Shopping experience design should be implemented for those who come to the store, using the 'peak-end rule' (the best or worst moment, i.e., the peak moment; the end is the terminal moment) for traffic flow design. In-store experience mainly strengthens cognition, improves transactions, and enhances interaction and participation with consumers. For example, Xiaomi's early three tactics: open participation nodes, design interaction methods, and spread word-of-mouth events. Consumers like to search and learn information online, read reviews, and prefer to complete transactions offline. Therefore, online experience focuses mainly on content output and co-creation with consumers. 5. Toolkit of Four: Cloud Store + Community + Live Streaming + WeChat Moments. Without supporting tools, efficient and fast connections cannot be achieved. The cloud store is a transaction tool that implements sales-level profit sharing and promotional activities (group buying, flash sales, chain buying, bargaining). Communities are the venue for online funnel screening, layering, aggregation, communication, and dissemination. Live streaming is a video format for communicating, interacting, and increasing participation with users. Operating WeChat Moments is private domain traffic operation, emphasizing one-on-one. The application of New Store Commerce needs to vary by industry and product characteristics. In practice, it should be tailored to the product and industry, extracting common business underlying logic and choosing differentiated implementation operations. Not all are for direct transaction realization; some are for shaping cognitive momentum, some for sales conversion. Different stages have different operations, which will be detailed in subsequent articles. Are you 'watching' me?