First, the catering industry is in trouble.
1, the cost of raw materials, labor and leasing has risen sharply;
2. There are many problems in enterprise food quality management, cash management and employee management, and there is a lack of efficient and perfect management mechanism and service system;
3. Without talents, enterprises can't attract or cultivate enough technical and management talents.
4. Food safety problems are frequent, enterprises have no effective countermeasures, and their sense of responsibility is weak.
5, the increasingly fierce market competition, triggered by the price war, preferential war makes the profit space smaller.
Second, the introduction of O2O.
O2O is OnlineToOffline, which combines offline business opportunities with the Internet and makes the Internet the front desk for offline transactions. In this way, offline services can attract customers online, consumers can screen services online, and transactions can be settled online, which will soon reach scale. There are also views that O2O is a special form of C2B, and its future development will surpass traditional e-commerce (see Ma's blog "Can Online Go Beyond Traditional E-commerce" for details).
Group buying is a typical example from online to offline at first, but the ups and downs of group buying have exposed many problems. One of the big problems is that group buying websites attract a large number of users for businesses with big discounts, but they can't stick to users, and there are very few secondary consumers among users. After all, most people like discounts. Group buying websites only provide offline merchants with a platform for displaying services and online payment, which is the so-called "offline transaction front desk", but the role is nothing more than that.
The typical case of o2o is Suning.cn. With its powerful offline resources and the number of users, Suning.cn has developed into five domestic e-commerce companies in just two years. It can be seen that offline has also played a very powerful role in promoting online.
However, it is not enough to guide users from offline to online or from online to offline. O2o is actually a closed loop of online and offline two-way circulation.
O2o should give full play to the respective advantages and characteristics of online and offline. On the one hand, it relies on traditional Internet, mobile Internet, offline stores and offline media. To guide users to enter the closed loop from different time periods and different places.
On the other hand, it ensures the smooth online and offline two-way channels, allowing users in the closed loop to shuttle back and forth smoothly between the network and reality, so that they can deepen their impression of the brand at multiple levels and through multiple channels, enhance their loyalty to the brand, and improve secondary consumption.
Third, the two main modes of catering O2O
As for the mobile marketing means of O2O, Ma summarized two main modes of catering O2O at present: First, catering enterprises build their own O2O, such as setting up online booking service in official website, using social networking platforms WeChat and Weibo for publicity, and developing their own App mobile phone client for information push and online booking. Second, with the help of third-party platforms, such as micro-grid mobile marketing cloud platform, establish O2O in one stop.
But looking at the two modes of O2O, each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Next, Ma will analyze the advantages and disadvantages of these two modes.
1, self-built online to offline
After launching LBS check-in service in Sina Weibo, catering enterprises cooperated with Sina and settled in Sina Weibo check-in service. Sina Weibo can set up POI(PointofInterest) pages for catering enterprises in different stores across the country, showing the information of a certain store in detail. For example, recommend food, discount information and so on. 20 13 restaurant company launched its own mobile APP "China", which has the functions of restaurant reservation, activity information, personal center, map search and so on. With the explosive growth of WeChat, catering enterprises have multiple WeChat official account on WeChat, and actively cooperate with Tencent around WeChat WeChat official account, such as WeChat Pay.
It is not difficult to find from the self-built O2O process of catering enterprises that this online-offline approach is conducive to catering enterprises to carry out more in-depth cooperation according to actual needs and can be customized for development. However, this model also exposes some disadvantages, that is, the development cost is high, and the maintenance cost increases because of the scattered resources. This model is suitable for well-funded brand enterprises.
2. One-stop online to offline
Through this platform, catering enterprises set up their own mobile shops (APPs) and automatically generate mobile business cards (mobile websites) and micro-websites, all of which illustrate the comfortable environment of noodle restaurants, the promotion of exquisite dishes and the promotion of daily special dishes. Among them, the location reservation service is realized by one-click direct dialing of mobile business cards and online reservation functions of mobile stores and micro-websites.
In addition, the platform can effectively manage members, send SMS/MMS, and use WeChat/Weibo for social media marketing based on O2O QR code application.
As can be seen from the case, this kind of online to offline is conducive to the aggregation of decentralized mobile marketing methods, which is convenient for the management and maintenance of catering enterprises and enables them to quickly lay out O2O.
In addition, the operating cost is low (but the cost of developing an APP independently is also high. For details, please refer to Ma's blog "What is the cost of making and developing App application software"). However, the disadvantage of this model is that it is not suitable for customized deep cooperation, and this model is suitable for small and medium-sized enterprises with short funds.
Fourth, the benefits of the catering industry entering o2o.
A good online to offline can enhance user stickiness, improve brand awareness and promote secondary consumption. For the catering industry, Ma feels that online to offline can bring the following benefits:
1, online to offline is conducive to the innovative development of the catering industry.
Online to offline to help catering enterprises find new customers, develop new products and meet customer needs; Accurate, timely and low-cost local search and collection of online customer information is also beneficial for enterprises to actively develop customer resources. It can be said that online to offline will promote the combination of online and offline business in the catering industry and accelerate industry innovation.
2. Online to offline will help the catering industry reduce costs.
The cost of publishing service information online is obviously much lower than offline, and the spread is much wider. It is also much more convenient to manage customers through online platforms, and the communication with customers will be smoother, which will help catering enterprises reduce costs.
3. Online to offline contributes to the branding of catering enterprises.
The construction of O2O platform for catering enterprises can not only reduce costs, but also promote brand building and promotion. Publicity, booking, consultation, complaints and other services through websites or mobile apps can raise the service and marketing methods of enterprises to a new height, form good interaction with customers through the Internet, and help catering enterprises gather popularity and shape word of mouth.
4.o2o helps to establish a good management mechanism and service system.
From online to offline, it is necessary to establish an efficient and standardized service system, order system and payment system for online and offline communication. O2o will help to improve the overall management mechanism and service system of catering enterprises (see the introduction of "The core of shopping from online to offline is fan service+localization" on Ma Blog for details).
5.o2o helps the company to deal with public relations events.
In an era when food safety problems are frequent and users' distrust of food safety is increasing, catering enterprises can communicate with users in a timely and effective manner through o2o platform, get the latest progress and effect of crisis handling immediately, and make various countermeasures quickly, which can effectively reduce or even avoid the trust crisis caused by such problems.
Five, catering industry into o2o three problems to be solved urgently
O2o can bring many benefits to the catering industry, but it is not easy to realize O2O. Ma believes that catering enterprises need to solve three problems first:
1, the industry norms and standards system is imperfect.
This is also the biggest obstacle for domestic industries to enter O2O. From online to offline, technology and standardization construction need to be emphasized first. The reason why western food such as KFC, McDonald's and Pizza Hut is easier to achieve O2O than Chinese food is because the standardized management system of western food is much more perfect than Chinese food.
Although the electronic catering industry has gradually become popular in recent years, it is still very backward in general. It is difficult to make a breakthrough in the field of O2O by relying on the Internet instead of using computer systems to realize process transformation and management strengthening.
2. Lack of compound talents or teams.
The main problem of domestic catering industry entering O2O is the lack of high-quality compound talents who know both catering and Internet. The competition in the catering industry is nothing more than capital investment, business philosophy, dish flavor, marketing strategy, service level and price positioning, all of which focus on the quantity and quality of talents. The application of Internet (including the rapidly developing mobile Internet) technology needs to be equipped with higher-level talents, and the lack of this piece is also an obstacle for the catering industry to enter o2o (of course, it also brings opportunities for O2O entrepreneurs, which can be learned in detail through the introduction of "10 O2O entrepreneurs' entry point and entrepreneurial opportunities" on Ma Blog).
3. Not familiar with the Internet and the O2O platform is not perfect.
Online to offline requires a combination of online and offline. Just as online e-commerce has repeatedly hit the wall when it enters offline, there are also many problems when offline merchants enter online. For example, the planning and design of the platform is unreasonable, the needs of Internet users are miscalculated, they don't know how to conduct online marketing, the boss who is new to the Internet blindly directs, blindly follows the trend, and throws money at will, and so on. Even some enterprises are not equipped with the most basic hardware and software equipment to carry out this work.
Six, catering o2o needs to achieve three standardization.
Among the above three problems faced by the catering industry, the establishment of standardized management system is the most critical. Specifically, the catering industry o2o needs to achieve the following three types of standardization.
1, service system standardization
The catering industry is not networked and informatized, and the company lacks basic computer equipment, relevant technicians and professional service personnel, so it is difficult to effectively connect with online platforms and obtain feedback data from users in time. These factors all affect the operational efficiency and effectiveness of the entire o2o platform.
2. Standardization of order system
It is very important to standardize the order process and order format. The smooth transmission and processing of online and offline user data, order data and fund data all require standardized order flow and order format.
In addition, for catering enterprises, the order is also the key to measure the project effect and evaluate the performance of employees, and the speed of order processing is also directly related to the user experience of the platform.
3. Standardization of payment system
Cash flow is the lifeblood of any enterprise, and the payment system as a cash flow carrier is naturally very important. Pure offline payment or pure online payment has its own payment system, but there is no perfect scheme for online and offline payment, especially in the catering industry with low information popularization.
Therefore, it is necessary to build a low-cost, high-efficiency and high-security payment system that suits you on the basis of understanding the latest payment technologies such as QR code, NFC and SiMPass.
Seven, some suggestions to realize the catering online to offline.
1. Before building the platform, consider establishing a perfect ERP system and using a unified database online and offline.
2. Establish an o2o website to undertake the functions of user information, ordering, feedback, communication and payment, so as to ensure that enterprises can communicate and interact with users at work and at home.
3. Develop a mobile APP with functions of location search, ordering, ordering and mobile payment. In this way, enterprises can communicate and interact with users in fragmented time such as going to work and eating in restaurants.
4. Establish a set of points system, open websites, apps and restaurants with points, increase the interoperability between online and offline, and improve the interactivity of the whole platform.
5. Apply the latest mobile Internet technologies such as QR code, NFC and LBS to improve the payment system and improve the convenience of the whole service. For example, after the user orders food and pays for it on the website, the platform will send a QR code to the user by SMS or letter in the APP station, and the user can eat in the restaurant with this QR code; By adding nfc tags to the menu of restaurants, users can order food automatically at the touch of their mobile phones.
6. The whole platform should pay attention to integrity, efficiency and user experience, which is the key to success or failure from online to offline.
Ma commented on his blog:
Catering O2O must be based on the catering industry, and it must not be made into a catering industry. This is equivalent to e-commerce, which must be based on "commerce" and "electronics" is the way and means.