Suning Spoils For an E-Commerce Price War As it Shifts From China’s High Streets
History will soon come to be littered with retailers who failed to make the switch to the internet age, and instead declined to the point where their shelves gathered more dust than fingerprints, and cash registers fell silent. But China’s Suning (SHE:002024) is making it clear that it wants as significant a presence on the country’s e-commerce scene as on its city streets, starting a promotional price war aimed at its rival etailers of gadgets and home electronics.
歴史は間もなく、インターネット時代へ上手くシフトできなかった販売店、指紋ではなく埃だらけの商品棚と、音をたてることがなくなったキャッシュレジスターしか見当たらないといった落ちるところまで落ちた販売店で散乱することになるだろう。しかし中国の蘇寧電器（Suning - SHE:002024）は、国内でのEコマース界でも、市内の店舗と同じような際立った存在感を示したいと明確にしており、ガジェットや家電製品を販売するライバル販売店に対抗するべく価格競争を開始した。
Next week, on April 18th to 20th, Suning plans a sale on every item on its website – a promotional price battle that will put the pressure especially on Dangdang (NYSE:DANG) and 360Buy. To succeed in e-commerce, Suning is aiming to topple such internet upstarts, and put its bricks-and-mortar retailing skills to full use in the digital age. There’s no significance to those dates next week – it seems that Suning is just spoiling for a fight and some free publicity.
Suning this weekend tweeted on the social network Sina Weibo the orders of its chairman, Zhang Jindong, saying – in curiously militaristic language – that he had ordered an e-commerce “general offensive” by the company that would “not be just a marketing campaign,” but an all-out effort to gain market share from the B2C e-commerce elite. Suning exec Min Juanqing delivered the head honcho’s words on his own microblog [1]:
According to chairman Zhang’s instructions, for this full year it would not be a problem to achieve 20 billion RMB in sold items, but we implore the team to sprint towards 30 billion RMB.
会長である Zang の説明によれば、今年1年間で売上200億元は問題なく獲得できそうであり、300億元を全力で目指すことになるもようだ。
That presumably includes High Street shops as well as its web retailing efforts, but that growth is being marked out as coming from its online store.
The CEO of rival Dangdang, Li Guojing, was unimpressed – yes, Weibo is a fun way to get some quality business bitchin’ – saying [2] that this “is 360Buy’s problem” – with the implication being because that site relies more on sales of electronics.
360Buy’s CEO and founder, Liu Qiangdong has cut back on his tweeting of late, and didn’t weigh in on the debate.
競合 Dangdang のCEO、Li Guojing は感心した風もなく、「そうだ、微博は高級ブランドをカッコよくするには良い方法だよ」といい、「これは360Buy の問題だよ」とも言った（注2）。サイトの売上のかなりの部分をエレクトロニクス関連の商品に頼っていることを言っているのだろう。
360Buy のCEO兼創業者である Liu Qiangdong は、最近はツイートが減り、論争にも入ってこなくなった。
ライバルであるDangdangのLi Guojing最高経営責任者(CEO)はこれに感銘を受けなかったようだ。まったく、Weiboは質の高いビジネス情報を格好良くつかむための楽しい方法だ。同氏によると、これ『は、360Buyの問題だ[2]』とのことである。つまり、サイトが電子機器の売り上げに大きく頼っている、とほのめかしているのだ。
360Buyの設立者で、最高責任者であるLiu Qiangdong氏は最近、ツイートを減らしており、 この議論には参加しなかった。
So, while bricks-and-mortar retailers are struggling in the UK and the US – with Comet, Circuit City, and Borders going down in recent years – Suning is determined to make the leap from mere commerce, to future-grabbing e-commerce. But of course, in China’s already mature and cut-throat industry, three days of price-cutting means nothing – the war will be won over years of ruinously expensive ad campaigns and major investments in logistics.
