Online retailers go offline in China
THE season for the best xiaolongxia (“little dragon shrimp”) is just beginning, and so on a recent evening four young friends tucked into a pile of steaming-hot crayfish. But rather than sitting in a restaurant they were at a table surrounded by supermarket aisles stocked with nappies, baby formula and cooking oil. Above them, groceries and made-to-order meals, gathered by store attendants from shelves and nearby cooking stations, were wafted on aerial conveyor belts into a storeroom. There they were packaged and whisked to Shanghai homes within a 3km radius, at any hour and in under 30 minutes.
小龙虾的季节才刚刚开始，最近的一个晚上，四个年轻的朋友大吃一堆热腾腾的小龙虾，但是，他们不是坐在餐馆里，而是坐在摆满了尿布、婴儿配方奶粉和食用油的超市走道上。在他们的上方，由商店服务员从货架上和附近的烹饪点汇集起来的食品杂货和定制的饭菜，由空中传送带送到了一个储藏室。在那里，他们被打包，在3公里范围内的任何时间点，它们会在30分钟内被飞送到上海的家家户户。
“Eat-as-you-shop” is one innovation of Hema Xiansheng, a chain of fancy supermarkets. And these shops are themselves the showiest elements of a bid by Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce emporium that handles more transactions than Amazon and eBay combined, to master “online-to-offline”, or O2O, retailing, in which customers use digital channels to buy from physical businesses. Alibaba currently runs 40 Hema stores in ten cities. It wants to open 2,000 in the next five years.
“边买边吃”是盒马鲜生的创新产品，它是一种奇异的超市。这些商店本身就是阿里巴巴的投标中最引人注目的元素。阿里巴巴是一家中国电子商务商场，处理的交易数量超过了亚马逊和eBay的总和，从而掌握了“线上到线下”，即O2O、零售业，消费者通过这种方式使用数字渠道从实体企业购买商品。阿里巴巴目前在10个城市经营着40家盒马门店。它希望在未来五年内开2000个。
The offline sector makes e-commerce giants salivate partly because 85% of Chinese still stubbornly buy their products from bricks-and-mortar stores, and partly because it is so fragmented. The five largest supermarket groups control 27% of the business, compared with 78% in Britain. Filling the gap are over 6m independent corner shops, which account for a combined 10trn yuan ($1.6trn) in revenue.
线下部分让电子商务巨头垂涎，部分原因是85%的中国人仍然顽固地从实体店购买他们的产品，部分原因是它太分散了。五大超市集团控制着27%的业务，而英国的这一比例为78%。填补这一缺口的是超过600万个独立的街角商店，这些商店的收入合计达10万亿元(1.6万亿美元)。
Alibaba is hoping to apply its online know-how to them with Ling Shou Tong, a free retail-management platform launched in 2016. Through it, shop owners can order products sourced by Alibaba from partners such as Procter & Gamble. It then uses its logistics affiliate, Cainiao, to ship them. Shops are given advice on what to stock based on Alibaba’s trove of data—plenty of dog food in pooch-loving areas, say. In return Alibaba gets valuable data on spending habits in poorer cities, especially among older shoppers who buy offline.
阿里巴巴希望将其在线的成功秘诀应用于2016年推出的免费零售管理平台零售通(Ling Shou Tong)。通过它，店主可以从阿里巴巴订购来自宝洁等合作伙伴的产品。然后，它利用其物流子公司菜鸟(Cainiao)来运送它们。根据阿里巴巴的海量数据，商店可以提议如何备货，比如说在喜欢爱狗的地区备很多狗粮。反过来，阿里巴巴获得了有关贫穷城市消费习惯的宝贵数据，尤其是那些在线下购买的老年人。
A clearer signal of Alibaba’s ambitions as a provider of services to other outlets came on April 2nd, when it bought the shares it did not already own in Ele.me, valuing the food-delivery platform at $9.5bn. These services span online tools for inventory management to marketing and smartphone payments. They also include labour. Ele.me’s network lets thousands of small restaurants ferry dishes to the doors of some of China’s 700m smartphone users. Through the acquisition Jack Ma, Alibaba’s founder, added 3m delivery people to the 2m of Cainiao, boosting the group’s “last-mile” delivery capabilities.
作为为其他渠道提供服务的供应商，阿里巴巴在4月2日显示出明确的野心，因为它购买了“饿了么”它尚未拥有的股份，这个外卖平台的估值为95亿美元。这些服务涵盖了从库存管理到营销和智能手机支付的在线工具，还包括劳工。饿了么的网络将成千上万的小餐馆的美食送到中国7亿智能手机用户的手中。通过此次收购，阿里巴巴创始人马云(Jack Ma)给有200万员工的菜鸟增加了300万名送货员，增加了该集团的“最后一英里”送货能力。
The Ele.me acquisition is a direct challenge to Tencent, a gaming-and-social-media giant owned by Pony Ma (no relation to Alibaba’s founder), which has a large stake in a rival delivery service run by Meituan-Dianping. It is just the latest offline battlefront between the two online giants. Since late 2016, each has spent about $10bn to acquire stakes in big traditional retailers. Last year Alibaba bought a large stake in Sun Art, China’s biggest private supermarket operator. In December Tencent responded with a stake in Yonghui Superstores, China’s second-largest, and is considering another in the Chinese operations of Carrefour, a French hypermarket. Tencent is making another offline foray through JD, an e-commerce rival to Alibaba in which it holds an 18% stake and with which it has teamed up on big retail investments. Last year JD announced that it would open 1m convenience stores in the next five years.
“饿了么”的收购是对腾讯的直接挑战，腾讯是由马化腾（与阿里巴巴创始人无关系）创建的一家游戏和社交媒体巨头，它在（饿了么的）竞争对手美团-大众点评运营的派递服务中持有大量股份。这只是这两个网络巨头之间最新的线下战场。自2016年末以来，它们各自花费了约100亿美元收购大型传统零售商的股份。去年，阿里巴巴收购了中国最大的民营超市运营商高鑫的大量股份。作为回应，去年12月，腾讯对中国第二大超市永辉超市(Yonghui Superstores)注资，并正在考虑另一家法国大型超市家乐福(Carrefour)的中国业务。腾讯正在通过京东(JD)进行另一次线下进军。京东是阿里巴巴的电子商务竞争对手，持有阿里巴巴18%的股份，并与阿里巴巴联手进行大型零售投资。去年，京东宣布将在未来5年内开设100万家便利店。
Liu Zhangming of TF Securities, a brokerage, thinks that Tencent is on the back foot, investing in bricks-and-mortar because it fears that Alibaba’s retail foray will help to promote its mobile-payment system, Alipay. That risks pushing Tencent’s WeChat Pay out of swathes of the offline market. Hema stores, for instance, accept only Alipay or cash. Independent retailers are choosing their sides: Walmart, a partner with JD since 2016, announced on March 27th that it would accept only WeChat Pay in its stores in western China.
经纪公司天风证券的刘章明认为，腾讯在投资实体店领域处于不利地位，因为它担心阿里巴巴的零售业务将有助于推动其移动支付系统——支付宝(Alipay)。这有让腾讯的微信支付被迫退出线下市场的风险。例如，盒马商店只接受支付宝或现金。独立的零售商正在选择他们的立场:沃尔玛，自2016年起与京东合作，于3月27日宣布，在中国西部地区，它将只接受微信支付。
Of the ten biggest supermarkets in China by market share, only three have yet to claim a broader allegiance to either of the Messrs Ma. Some observers argue that the sheer number of retailers means that the supermarket wars may not be won by either of the online titans. The tool-kits they are plugging may not be the ones embraced by all retailers, says Mr Liu.
在中国市场份额最大的10家超市中，只有三家还没有向两位马先生中的任何一位表示更广泛的忠心。一些观察人士认为，零售商的绝对数量意味着，两位网络巨头可能都不会赢得超市战争，刘先生说，他们推销的工具箱可能不是所有零售商所乐于接受的。
Yet no firm can match these tech titans’ tentacular reach into the everyday lives of Chinese consumers. Tencent has turned its WeChat messaging system into a super app that allows its 1bn users to order food, hail taxis and make payments; JD, like Alibaba, runs a supply platform for small businesses. Wai-chan Chan of Oliver Wyman, a consultancy, expects a shake-out in the distribution sector, as the two giants become middlemen for brands and physical stores. Many of their ventures are still experiments in how to make the most of fresh reams of data they can gather. Even if they end up not owning a dominant chain of stores, ultimately, says Mr Chan, they will “own the customer”.
然而，没有哪家公司能像这些科技巨头的触手一样伸向中国消费者的日常生活。腾讯已经将其微信通讯系统变成了一款超级应用程序，允许10亿用户订购食品、打车和付款;与阿里巴巴一样，京东也为小企业提供了一个供应平台。咨询公司奥纬咨询(Oliver Wyman)的陈伟强(waichan Chan)预计，随着这两大巨头成为品牌和实体店的中间商，分销行业将出现动荡。他们的许多风投公司仍在尝试如何利用他们收集到的大量新数据。陈先生说，即使他们最终没有拥有一家占主导地位的连锁店，他们也会“拥有客户”。
Correction, April 6th: An earlier version of this story misstated the dollar conversion of 10trn yuan, as $1.6bn. The correct figure is $1.6trn.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline "Two Ma race"
英文原文选自《经济学人》