I want to use a article without any data as the starting point, and talk to you about some of my recent insights, feelings and ideas.
1. Is Japan our future?
I went to Japan once a year ago and stayed for 20 days. There were a lot of gains. Recently, I have to go again.
Almost all friends in the consumer circle care about an important topic, the 30 years after the breakdown of the Japanese bubble economy. Is the path of the entire market development of our model room?Our consumers, our brand, where will our channels eventually go?If Japan’s current is our future, then we have found a reasonable benchmark and can take less detours.
I give my answer to this question first:no!And it is not fully!
Second, an omnipresent consumer system
Before explaining why this answer, I want to share with you some of my consumption in Japan.
I almost use bank cards in Japan this time, and I rarely use Alipay and WeChat.In 2019, I came to Tokyo. A big contrast is that the use scenarios of Alipay and WeChat are few; although the entire mobile payment is very popular in Japan, the usage rate is not high. The locals almost use Alipay and WeChat to WeChat, Paypay more.
The reason is that on the one hand, Japanese e -commerce is not developed, and the rigid use scenarios of electronic payment are still too small; on the other hand, you can see that Japan’s mobile payment seemssupplier.This is an interesting result of competition. In fact, my awareness of this matter is that this state will continue. The reason is that the reason isThese mobile payment service providers serve tourists in different regionsAs long as the Japanese tourism industry is continuously open and Japan’s diplomatic relations policy has not changed greatly, they can coexist in harmony.For example, LINE Pay is mainly targeted at tourists in South Korea and Taiwan. Alipay and WeChat payment mainly serve tourists in mainland China. PayPal may be more for European and American customers, and PayPay serves local people with online shopping habits.
In addition to cash, IC cards are also very important local trading mediums. I use Suica, tram, go to supermarkets to buy things, and even many chain shops and ramen restaurants support it, which is very convenient.
When I recharged SUICA, I found that I always paid a company called “JR East Japan”. I inquired with local friends. The earliest JR company belonged to the country.Family company, one is called “JR East Japan” and the other is called “JR West Japan”.
This information is very important because it explains the important source of IC cards from frequent commuting and is nationwide; this is the same as that of mobile payment mostly developed from e -commerce payment.
When I started in Tokyo, I needed to fly to Hokkaido once during this period. My plane took off at 10 o’clock. Because the language was not connected, I was worried that I was embarrassed on the tram with a few large boxes.EssenceTo my surprise, there are many passengers at 5 o’clock in the tram station, a scene that is about to peak early.Later, it was confirmed by friends that in Tokyo, even if the railway was peak at 6 o’clock, it will continue until 10 o’clock.It’s hard to imagine, Japan(At least it is Tokyo)The railway system runs almost 24 hours, offses less than 3 hours, and works again.
Why can Japan form such a huge commuting demand to drive the entire railway network?The need for tourism is an important reason. I went to many places through JR only in Hokkaido.On the other hand, I think the small region in Japan may be an important reason. Trams are a good alternative to aircraft. The price is cheap. In time, it will not be much slower than the plane, and it is flexible.(There are many shifts)It can also avoid various tedious procedures such as security checks.
The deeper reason may also be related to the highly divided society with the entire country in Japan. Their products are very detailed, their occupations are very detailed, and they are more professional.Planet -specific mineral collection technology.This specialization division of labor is also mapped on the city cluster. You may have to go to a certain county to find some specific screws, and find a special collar.You have to go out, which creates a person’s full liquidity motivation. It first has a strong railway and a payment form such as IC card.
We returned to the IC card. I said earlier that IC cards can be used in Japan very much, but most of the scenes are actually centered on human daily consumption needs, buying, buying and drinking, buyers.
If you stay in Japan for a while, you will find that almost every station has a complete commercial ecosystem. It includes department stores, commercial streets, rich diet systems and drugstores(I use more drugstores to see writers in a miscellaneous shop)To meet almost all your daily needs.These business ecology can almost be said to be the same, as if you can find pedestrian hubs such as Xin Taoqiao and Tanuki in every city.Furthermore, if you go to observe the products displayed, except for some national brands that are sold in almost all stores, the efficacy of various local brands is not much worse. There are countless local brands.
So why can so many homogeneous products survive at the same time?The reason is also very simple, becauseThey serve customers in the local marketI’m here, and I will consume here. If I go to other places tomorrow, I will spend other places.You will find a set of very interesting causality,If you think of Japan as a market as a whole, such a market has such a strong homogeneity and tolerance, which is prerequisite for human liquidity.
Third, take a closer look(cosmetic)
This time, I also went to@cosme several times.@COSME should be the largest cosmetics evaluation website in Japan, and at the same time, it is the largest offline cosmetics collection store in Japan.I found a quite interesting phenomenon in the store. Most of the products are priced between 1,000 and 5,000 yen(Equivalent to about 50 ~ 250 yuan)There are very few products with 5,000 to 10,000 yen. It seems that there are more products above 10,000 yen, but many products have not been sold in @COSME. Such pricing products are generally owned by department stores or shopping malls.Counter or specialty store.
These findings also guided me to pay attention to where the lower pricing products appeared. In fact, Matsumoto, Don Quixote, and Dachen operate many cosmetics with a lot of pricing below 1,000 yen. Most of these cosmetics products are mostly. Most of these cosmetics products are mostly.It is a channel self -operated brand. I even discovered that Matsumoto’s self -employed brand facial essence only sold 790 yen(Empathy of about 39 yuan)Essence
For a long time, I have always had an unknown point of view of the relationship between economy and consumption: I think the pricing structure of market consumer goods reflects the true income structure of the country.
So, I asked my friends, whether the Japanese are also divided into class. What is the specific income gap between them?
She told me that Japan’s real rich people, ordinary citizens can hardly contact. This kind of contact is not in the real physical sense, it is completely isolated.The restaurants that these people are entering and leaving are almost all private dishes, and the daily recreation of CLUB with a very high threshold. The consumer products they use are even some privatized brands.(This means that these cosmetics are not sold in general open channels, and at most one own official website can be placed)EssenceThese rich people usually participate in the operations of monopoly industries, such as heavy industry, transportation systems, and higher education institutions.If you open a 30 ~ 50 people in Japan, you can only be called middle -class. The most left is the bottom level of the worker and the social society where the relief and the hourly workers are working.
This is not the case. It happened that these classes and the major products I observed corresponded, but my understanding of the privatization brand was still not clear enough, so I asked my friends.The founder of the private brand is usually some rich ladies who have nothing to do with their amateur. She showed me a product called 55 cream. I asked her why it was called 55 cream?She said that the founder founded the brand when he was 55 years old.
There are a lot of walking between Japanese rich wives. On the one hand, this is regarded as a way to help her husband link resources. On the other hand, they will spontaneously form a variety of “women’s meetings” and organize many activities. These products are usually them.Flows in various “women’s associations”.You can understand these “women’s associations” as private domain.
It is not easy to stand in the consumer market in Japan. It is completely different from the ability to operate a consumer brand in China. I list the similarities and differences I see:
The starting point of domestic consumer goods business is marketing and funds. The starting point of Japanese consumer goods business is products and channels.
Marketing capabilities now include excellent product interpretation capabilities and the ability to quickly attract consumers.The Japanese are very concerned about whether the product is domestically produced. In their minds, domestic production is always the best. The premium of the domestic production can even exceed the premium of luxury goods; except for domestic production, how the product is presented to consumers to consumers.(On the shelf)There are novel differences, good experience processes, and whether the quality of the product is excellent, whether the product can have the right cost -effectiveness determines its destiny.
If domestic consumer goods start through any online platform, huge funds are required for buying, which is the result of the must -have after the platform monopoly; the first step of the success or failure of Japanese consumer goods, can you enter @cosme at the same time and quickly enter @cosmemeLOFT and other stores are the key.
There is no chance of the China -Japan consumer goods market, at least there must be no chance.In terms of cosmetics, Chinese brands go to sea in Japan are extremely difficult. On the one hand, the Japanese cosmetics market is extremely fast, and it is difficult to achieve localized response; on the other hand, the import labels and different understanding of quality will lead to products.In the last aspect, it is difficult for the Chinese team to establish a wide and deep channel relationship with the supplier in a short time.The above three points will greatly limit the play of Chinese brands in the Japanese market.
Fourth, the evil of e -commerce
Now returning to our initial discussion, will the domestic consumer economy go to Japan?I will use limited clues here to deduce me how to think about this question and give a negative answer.
We all know that the Japanese bubble economy has experienced 30 years of ups and downs. To this day, the Japanese economy has begun to show certain potential.The famous economist Gu Chaoming believes that Japan’s economic recession belongs to a type of “balance sheet decline”. In short, for general companies, the asset side(Such as real estate)Sharply shrink(House prices have fallen sharply), But debt lock(How much does the company owns how much money you have to pay)The financial cost of enterprises has increased sharply, investment research and development behaviors are reduced, and the lack of innovation has caused economic stagnation or even falling backwards.As for what it has led to the breakdown of the Japanese economy, it is a problem that is unknown, because there is a lack of data, there are many sayings in this market, and it will not be tangled first.
It is necessary to accurately judge where our consumer economy will go. The first thing we must confirm is whether we are consistent with the macroeconomic situation of Japan at that time.I once wrote an article that we are not in the “balance sheet decline” of our current economy falling into a more complicated “decline in balance sheet”.
The meaning of “profitable decline” is also very direct. Our current situation is that the company lacks profitability, and even issues a part of the “balance sheet decline” disease.
The most important factor that causes the lack of profitability of enterprises isExcess supply of high homogeneityThe fuse is a political background of global cooperation disassembly.We have talked about the Japanese consumer market in the previous article that there are also a large amount of homogeneous supply, but why can the other party’s market be digested, and we can’t?Find the answer to this key question, and other problems are solved by the trend.
In my opinion, becauseThe evil of e -commerce.
In a sense of e -commerce, it is a type of “national unified market”. In this field, capital is the only game rule, and the information of almost all products is gathered to maximize the asymmetry of information.All products are competing in this “transparent field”. This is as if we put all consumer goods in the country into a Kerry Center.At the moment when the stock competition is becoming more and more intense, this integration will cause at least three serious problems:
1. Endless competition to wipe a lot of innovation
Since e -commerce is a public hall, the cost of this field is uniform. My marketing costs are consistent with your marketing costs. I will not give me a discount because I am a fourth and fifth -tier cities.At present, high traffic and marketing costs will seriously squeeze the living space of many offline cities and start -up projects and kill innovation.
2. Destroy small and medium -sized companies in first -tier cities
The price system in offline cities and first -tier cities must be different, and the cost system is naturally different.The reality is that there may be several times the difference between them. Once these low -priced supply is fully connected to the market, the results of the operation of small and medium -sized companies in first -tier cities will directly impact the business results of small and medium -sized companies, because these companies have not yet formed a large -scale company’s scale effects.EssenceThe products they provide do not have the advantage of price, and economic tensions have forced them to turn to low -cost products in offline cities, which exacerbate their demise.
3. Monopoly exacerbation makes diversity lack
Especially in some fields, companies that have won the leading position enjoy the national market.As consumers’ gathering effects will be easier to obtain market share, and a deeper cost revolution on the production side, it will also have more sufficient funds for research and development to maintain the leader of products to strengthen the market position.Once the giant is sitting in a monopoly position, it will lack the motivation of iterative products.Because other companies cannot obtain sufficient profits, and it is difficult to make product changes, the market lacks diversity supply.
I said this thing seems to have a little meaning of Keynesianism, which is the opposite of the natural development of e -commerce.But there has never been absolute liberalism and Keynesianism. I think we should use different perspectives to look at problems when facing millions of people and hundreds of billion people.
so,E -commerce in a small -scale market with millions of people may benefit many people, but in the face of the large -scale market of 100 billion people, its final development result is to extremely lack of inclusivenessThis kind of tolerance refers to the tolerance of homogeneity. Because the information is to greatly symmetrical, it encourages the monopoly and even finally kills the existence of diversity.
5. China’s consumption economy does not have the foundation of development in the direction of Japan
Our consumption economy is not a simple field problem, not their online problem.It is the problem of homogeneity and tolerance. Our main channel has come to this day. In this regard, we are completely disabled and cannot even make adjustments.
The prosperity of Japan’s consumption relies to a large extent relying on the homogeneous and inclusive ability of the market. This tolerance has bred detailed differentiation in time scale and strengthened the entire system.
E -commerce has completely destroyed such prospects.
The homogeneity and tolerance of the Japanese market benefited from people’s Qualcomm’s habits. High -liquidity under Qualcomm has shaped the Japanese railway and rich commercial facilities. These commercial facilities and Japan’s unique cultural appearance have attracted tourists around the world to Japan.Consumption.
It is easy for people to believe in many incomplete claims. For example, most people even think that after 1989, the entire Japan has fallen into a complete depression, but I don’t look at this matter.
I think that Japan will only be caught in the temporary situation of “investment cannot be”. Although the company’s balance sheet is damaged, it will not threaten the profitability of most Japanese companies.After 30 years, the asset liabilities of most Japanese companies have been repaired.I think there are two data that can reflect the profitability of ordinary Japanese companies on the side. One is to observe the changes in the number of visitors to Japan, and the other is to observe the changes in the mileage of the Japanese railway.In fact, these two key indicators have been presented in a strong attitude in the past 30 years.
Back to us, I will detail why we can’t go to Japan’s consumer economic route:
So where will our consumer economy go?
6. Not Japan, who is Japan
Some people say that we may go to Russia’s model, and I don’t think it is.
In fact, this article only demonstrates the relationship between us and the Japanese consumer economy from a small perspective.But there are many factors that affect the current economy. For example, have we asked ourselves. Is our current overall debt structure consistent with Japan?The company’s backbone and personal debts are the two concepts; local debts and central debts are the two concepts.We know that any economy will have monopoly no matter what system develops in the later period. The important thing is how to find a self -sufficient way for the monopoly object under the framework of the market economy?
Anyway, I don’t know what our consumer economy will grow up in the end, but I know that there are three things that do three things to do a good job of consumer economy. They areThe shape of culture, openness and debt shift from bottom to top.
