Recently, there has been an alternative call on the Internet, which is to cancel takeaways, close e-commerce, and restore the city to the fireworks scene of crowded shopping on the streets in the past."In the past 10 years, many people believe that the prosperity of the food delivery and e-commerce industry has brought an unprecedented huge impact on the physical retail industry. However, there is indeed solid data that shows that the rapid rise of food delivery and e-commerce has had a greater impact on the business of physical stores.
According to public information, the revenue of China's physical retail industry in 2022 will be 381 trillion yuan, down 39%；In comparison, in 2022, the national online retail sales were 1379 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4%.
It is not difficult to find that the number of people shopping on the street has become less and less, so many stores are in a state of "door to door", usually not even the shadow of customers, business is naturally getting worse day by day.
Against this backdrop, proposals and calls for "canceling takeaways and closing e-commerce" have begun to appear in the market, and millions of people engaged in brick-and-mortar stores have expressed their support.
However, we believe that the cancellation of takeaway and the closure of e-commerce is undoubtedly a reversal of history, and it is a very absurd thing.
To give a simple example, a few decades ago, the popular thing in the ** period was rickshaw travel, which is a two-wheeled vehicle pulled by humans alone. However, after the advent of three-wheeled bicycles, the rickshaw business deteriorated. At that time, the situation was similar to now, and the people who pulled the rickshaws also collectively stood up against it in order not to lose their jobs. However, this kind of behavior is actually turning back the clock of history, and it will not work, because it is impossible for the times to stagnate for the benefit of some people.
In other words, no matter how opposed by some brick-and-mortar practitioners, e-commerce and takeaway, the two forms of commodity transactions and services, will not change, unless there is a more superior way of shopping than takeaway and e-commerce.
In fact, the city's pyrotechnics have not disappeared, but have existed in a different way.
In the understanding of many older generations, the city's fireworks may be a combination of street stalls and commercial streets. However, since the development of e-commerce and takeaway in China, more and more people have chosen to shop online and order food online, which makes many people feel that the street has lost its former prosperity.
But in fact, on the other side of e-commerce and takeaway, the "fireworks" are very thick. The first is that e-commerce has made the online economy unprecedentedly prosperous, and data shows that as of June 2023, the scale of online shopping users in China has reached 88.4 billion people;The development of e-commerce has also brought a large number of jobs, data show that as of 2022, China's e-commerce direct employees will reach 7.22 million, and indirect employees will reach 63.25 million.
According to data from the Meituan platform, by 2023, the total number of Meituan riders will exceed 7 million, and the total number of domestic and foreign sellers will exceed 10 million with platforms such as Ele.me. It can be seen that the development of food delivery and e-commerce is not as serious as some people say, but it has a promoting effect on the economy and employment.
And from an objective point of view, the current decline in the sales performance of domestic physical stores cannot but blame e-commerce and takeaways. Industry insiders pointed out that the current downturn in the real economy is mainly affected by the three-year epidemic, and the people have no money in their hands and dare not consume as beforeIn this context, even large enterprises are laying off employees, and small and medium-sized enterprises are having a hard time, which in turn causes a downturn in the real economy.
To sum up, we believe that the downturn in the real economy has little to do with the development of e-commerce and takeaway, and some people who are engaged in the physical store industry need to keep up with the times to learn Xi and progress, so as to solve the problems encountered.