中國引領食品零售發展趨勢

The sight of shoppers pushing supermarket trolleys among a crowd of Shanghainese chowing down seafood at a communal table is somewhat jarring. But this is a branch of Hema — one of 20 stores opened by Chinese ecommerce pioneer Alibaba in an effort to reimagine food shopping as more than a weekly chore carried out under the glare of fluorescent lights in a retailing shed.

一羣上海人在公共餐檯上吃着海鮮，旁邊是推着超市手推車的購物者，這一幕似乎有點不協調。但這是盒馬鮮生(Hema)的一家分店，是由中國電子商務先驅阿里巴巴(Alibaba)開設的20家店鋪之一，目的是重構食品購買，使其不只是每週在零售棚的熒光燈下完成的雜事。

“Is it a store? Is it a restaurant?” asks Bruno Monteyne, a former executive at Tesco, the international grocery retailer, who now follows the retail industry for Wall Street brokerage Bernstein. “I’m not sure, but it’s food experience at its best.”

國際食品零售商樂購(Tesco)前高管、如今在華爾街經紀商伯恩斯坦(Bernstein)追蹤零售業的布魯諾?蒙泰尼(Bruno Monteyne)問道：“它是商店嗎？它是餐廳嗎？我不確定，但它是一種極致的食品體驗。”

Hema is a hybrid of ecommerce and physical shopping, calculated to appeal to a generation of Chinese consumers who live life through their smartphones. Visitors can pull live crabs out of a large tank before browsing the aisles for packaged goods. They scan items as they go and pay for them via the Alipay app that has become a popular alternative to cash in China.

盒馬鮮生是電子商務和實體購物的混合體，目的是吸引日常生活離不開智能手機的一代中國消費者。顧客們可以從一個大水缸取出活蟹，然後在過道中瀏覽包裝商品。他們掃描商品，並通過支付寶(Alipay) App支付——支付寶在中國已成爲高人氣的現金替代品。

Many customers never set foot inside the store at all. They visit vicariously, using apps or the web platform to choose from the same wide range of branded products and fresh items, for delivery within a 3km radius. The store is fitted out with technology including a vertical conveyor, which helps staff serve the online orders without clogging up aisles or getting in the way of walk-in customers.

許多顧客從來不去店裏。他們以間接方式訪問，使用App或web平臺從同樣琳琅滿目的品牌產品和新鮮食品中選擇，這些商品在3公里範圍內可快速送貨上門。商店配備了包括垂直輸送機在內的技術，可以幫助員工在不堵塞過道或者妨礙店內客戶的情況下履行在線訂單。

Analysts say the future of food shopping can be glimpsed in prosperous Chinese cities, where a surge in mass-market retail has coincided with the mobile internet’s coming of age.

分析師們表示，從繁華的中國城市可以窺見食品購物的未來——在那裏，大衆市場零售的大發展正好趕上移動互聯網趨於成熟。

The world’s most populous nation already spends about 8.5 per cent of its annual grocery budget online, according to analysts at Bernstein, who reckon the proportion could reach 20 per cent by 2022. That compares with just 6.2 per cent in the UK — the most advanced western market, where chains such as Tesco have offered online shopping for two decades.

伯恩斯坦分析師表示，在這個世界上人口最多的國家，在線完成的食品支出已經佔到年度食品總支出的大約8.5%，預計到2022年，該比例可能達到20%。相比之下，在最發達的西方市場英國（樂購等連鎖店提供在線購物已有20年），這一比例只有6.2%。

Part of the reason that online innovation has been faster in China, says Mr Monteyne, is that the country has fewer “incumbent, lethargic retailers doing everything they can to protect their legacy assets and slowing down the transition”.

蒙泰尼表示，中國在線創新速度更快的部分原因在於，在這個國家，“死氣沉沉的老牌零售商較少，而正是這類企業會竭力保護自己的傳統資產，減緩轉型”。

Many western supermarket executives have been slow to embrace ecommerce. Some complain about the thin margins of a model that burdens their staff with the work of picking products off the shelves and delivering them. Others argue that online shoppers are more analytical and harder to seduce with eye-catching promotions.

許多西方超市的高管們遲遲不接受電子商務。一些人抱怨說，這種模式利潤率太低，要讓員工們從貨架上揀貨，然後還要送貨。其他人認爲，網上購物者更具分析能力，更難使用吸引眼球的促銷方式來引誘他們購買。

The US has been particularly resistant to change. Of the 2.1 per cent of American grocery spending that takes place online, a large chunk involves specialist items such as vitamin pills, bought via general-purpose platforms such as Amazon or eBay rather than through specialist grocery websites.

美國尤其不願變革。美國人的在線食品雜貨支出比例只有2.1%，而且有很大一部分涉及維生素藥丸等特殊商品，而且往往是通過亞馬遜(Amazon)或eBay等通用平臺（而非專業的食品超市網站）購買。

Still, if retail executives were once reluctant to meddle with a business model that yielded healthy profits, they are beginning to see caution as riskier than change.

話雖如此，如果說零售業高管曾經不願攪亂一個產生健康利潤的商業模式，那麼他們正開始認識到，謹慎比應變的風險更大。

When Amazon bought Whole Foods, an upmarket grocery chain, in June, the ecommerce group’s market value increased by more than the $13.7bn it had offered to pay, in what was by far the company’s largest acquisition to date.

今年6月亞馬遜收購高檔連鎖食品超市全食(Whole Foods)後，這家電商集團的市值增加額超過了它開出的137億美元收購報價。這是該公司迄今爲止遙遙領先的最大收購。

Meanwhile, shares in rivals such as Kroger, Target and Sprouts Farmers Market suffered sharp percentage declines. The financial fallout reached as far as Europe, where Tesco, J Sainsbury and Carrefour also suffered.

與此同時，克羅格(Kroger)、Target和Sprouts Farmers Market等競爭對手的股價大幅下跌。金融衝擊甚至波及歐洲，那裏的樂購、森寶利(J Sainsbury)和家樂福(Carrefour)股價也紛紛下跌。

While Amazon has long dabbled in grocery sales — launching Amazon Fresh in Seattle in 2007 and expanding to other large American cities over the past decade — the Whole Foods deal appeared to signal a change of pace, and prompted grocery chains to look for quick ways to adapt.

雖然亞馬遜早就試水食品銷售——2007年在西雅圖推出亞馬遜生鮮(Amazon Fresh)，並在過去10年裏擴張進入美國其他大城市——但全食交易似乎預示着步伐出現變化，促使各食品連鎖超市設法快速適應。

In the US, many retailers are turning to Instacart, the venture-capital backed start-up that puts supermarkets’ product ranges online and dispatches personal shoppers to deliver the goods to customers’ doors.

在美國，許多零售商轉向Instacart，這家風險資本支持的初創公司將超市的產品系列放在網上，並由揀貨員將商品送到客戶家門口。

Others, such as Walmart, prefer to make their own way online. America’s largest retailer now allows customers to order groceries online and pick them up quickly in store. Ahold Delhaize, the owner of Food Lion and Stop & Shop, offers its Peapod home shopping app in 24 US cities, and lets customers order food by dictating commands via Amazon’s voice assistant, Alexa.

沃爾瑪(Walmart)等其他零售商更喜歡自己發展在線銷售業務。美國最大零售商現在允許客戶在線訂購食品雜貨，然後在店內快速提貨。Food Lion和Stop & Shop的所有者Ahold Delhaize在美國24座城市提供Peapod居家購物App，並讓客戶通過亞馬遜的語音助手Alexa發出購買食品的指令。

Despite the shifts in behaviour that are likely to take shape as consumers move to food shopping online, few retail experts expect an assault from Amazon to sound the death knell of major supermarket groups, as it did for independent bookstores.

儘管隨着消費者轉向網上購買食品，購物行爲可能逐漸轉變，但很少有零售專家預計亞馬遜將會敲響大型超市集團的喪鐘，就像當年它壓垮獨立書店那樣。

Mr Monteyne says that established supermarkets have formidable advantages in buying fresh food at scale and shuttling it around the country cheaply and quickly enough to turn a profit, despite low margins and short shelf lives.

蒙泰尼表示，儘管利潤率低和保質期短，但老牌超市有着令人生畏的優勢，它們善於大規模購買新鮮食品，然後在全國範圍低成本而快速地配送這些食品，確保盈利。

Tesco’s chief executive Dave Lewis agrees. Amazon, he says, has recognised “that food through a central distribution model doesn’t seem to be working, having tried it for more than a decade in [their] hometown, Seattle”.

樂購首席執行官戴夫?劉易斯(Dave Lewis)對此表示同意。他說，亞馬遜認識到“食品似乎不適合中央配送模式，它們在老家西雅圖已經嘗試了10多年”。

The way he sees it, the newcomers in internet groceries are the ones playing catch-up. “They are trying to buy things that we, as Tesco, already have,” he says.

在他看來，互聯網食品零售業的新入行者正在追趕。他表示：“他們正試圖購買我們樂購已經擁有的東西。”