A few hours later, Roy walked out with a gloomy face, and it was clear that the secret of the "low price" he wanted had not been found.

Just now, he found a business school professor through Keno's contacts at Stanford and asked questions about business history, such as how Sears, the former mail-order magnate, sold goods cheaply across the United States.

The answer is: a lot.

80s of the 19th century. At that time, the population of the United States was only 56 million, and two-thirds of them lived in rural areas.

At that time, a major technological and social change was born, that is, the huge development of railroads in the United States. In the late 19th century, the United States laid a nationwide railroad line, which brought farmers in remote areas into the modern consumption system. Before this stage, the so-called "retail" was basically in the form of traditional street shops, many of which were small mom-and-pop shops.

This kind of business could not cover the vast rural areas of the United States at that time. Therefore, society as a whole urgently needs a new form of retail to meet the needs of these people.

This new form is mail order.

Sears was a sales genius at the time. He knew the needs of the peasants very well, and would buy some of the overstocked commodities that were mortgaged because of debts, some of which were only mortgaged because they did not conform to the aesthetics of city people, so they were bought at a very cheap price. But for the peasants, the style was not really important, so soon these goods became bestsellers in the countryside. Sears made a fortune.

At this time, people who shop online are young urban people who have computers and can access the Internet, and they may care about price, but they also care about style, quality, brand, and fashion trends, so Sears's "low price" strategy is not applicable to Roy's e-commerce company.

Sears at the time was also very service-oriented. At that time, he launched the free return and exchange system of "guaranteed satisfaction, otherwise the original money will be refunded". Sears also introduced a "cash on delivery" method modeled after its peers, allowing farmers to further let their guard down.

These two measures not only make the user experience better, but in turn require Sears to improve product quality, optimize operational efficiency, improve service levels, and so on.

With these few innovations, Sears quickly grew and was the largest retail company in the United States for a long time.

This routine of high-quality service, Roy knew it in his previous life, so there is no reference point.

Roy pondered in his mind that Sears was unable to reach rural customers because mom-and-pop stores were unable to reach rural users, and the railroad and postal systems that had emerged could help him reach those customers. The emerging Internet users are mainly concentrated in the cities, and it is very convenient for them to drive tens of millions of supermarkets, so there is no need to buy things from the Internet, and they have to wait for several days, and the shopping experience is not small compared to the shopping mall.

At Sears' time, mom-and-pop shops had very little influence on upstream suppliers. The mail-order company can reduce the price because it can collect enough relatively uniformly, which is also very concerned about rural users. In the case of online sales, if a large number of unified purchases are made, it is likely to cause inventory backlogs, increase storage costs, and add mailing costs, and the price is difficult to drop.

In particular, Wal-Mart, the "price butcher", has no way out in the price of the online shopping mall.

Roy was very impressed, even in 2010, online shopping in the United States did not rise, compared with the Double 11 boom in Chinese mainland, it was simply miserable. At that time, there were many domestic netizens who ridiculed the backwardness of American technology, and sang proudly on the post that the superhero was catching up with the United States.

At Sears's time, the peasants' consumption habits were relatively conservative, and they often bought the most necessary daily necessities, so mail-order companies did not need to prepare too many kinds of goods, so the inventory could be better controlled. After all, although the catalog can be 500 pages, it is still difficult to retrieve, and it cannot be compared with the future of e-commerce.

Roy pondered that this is the only advantage of e-commerce, that is, it has a complete range of things. But the sales price can't go down, and if you want to make an online shopping mall bigger, it's all.

Roy entered a state of serious doubt about his life, and had the delusion of escaping from wanting to go back to the mainland to open an e-commerce company: If this was in the mainland, it should be much simpler, right?

Why did Roy think so, because at this time, the mainland just caught up with the wave of Internet technology, and the national economy was also developing rapidly, but people's material pursuits were not completely satisfied. At this time, the e-commerce platform, just like the original copy of the Sears era, only needs to display a wealth of goods in front of the people with consumption potential, even if the price discount is not very large, there are still many people who pay.

The most important reason is that there are no low-cost supermarkets with complete products like Wal-Mart in the mainland! (Appendix 1)

Thinking about it, Roy had the urge to vomit blood: why do you want to do e-commerce? I was kicked by a donkey in my head, and when I saw that Cliver opened an e-commerce platform, did I have to compete for it?! Is the dignity of men and the fight for ** so strong? Do you have to beat the opponent and support the enemy's wife and children in person to settle the grievances?

Who am I? Where am I from? Where am I going?

When Roy was skeptical about his life, Debra, who was beside him, was holding a thick stack of materials, and his mouth was constantly fragmented: "What the hell Professor is talking about, what the hell is it talking about, what 'Churchill said: how long you can see history, how far into the future', let us look for the answer from the business case of history, and we don't understand it at all." pretending to be a ghost, pretending to be profound. The most important thing is, why do you want me to move such a large bundle of materials! ”

The two returned to the car, and Debra finally relieved herself of the burden and let out a long sigh of relief, but seeing that Roy had gone to sit in the co-pilot again, she had no choice but to go to the car.

On the way home, a depressed Roy receives a call from Jamie, "Hmm...... How? …… What the! …… Fack, are you gilded underneath? And asked me for money?! …… Alas, it's not that you won't be assigned a management position, but because I don't know which position you're suitable for, so you go to Doyle...... Well? Are you sure you're going to do this? …… Wouldn't it be, Alyssa, too? …… Okay, I see, we'll see you tomorrow. ”

"Jamie? What's wrong with her? ”

Roy rolled his eyes in his seat, "You still ask me every day when you're with her." Hehe, that girl, she can't do her job well, and she has to start her own business. ”

Entrepreneurship! Debra's mouth opened wide, shocked by Jamie's fearless courage.

[PS] Appendix 1: Wal-Mart is very scary, and people who don't live in the United States can't understand how extreme it is pushing prices. This will slowly be unveiled later.