The concept of "self-retail" is derived from the mature stage of development of new media, self-media and social media, and is put forward by the short-video social e-commerce platform Fenlai.

Self-retail (We retail), also known as "light retail" or "universal retail", refers to enterprises relying on the Internet, utilizing big data, artificial intelligence and other advanced technological means, and creating a new set of self-driven system through the form of social media. It is a general term for retailing behavior in which companies use advanced technological tools such as big data and artificial intelligence to create a new self-driven system through social media and serve suppliers and consumers, triggering them to recommend goods to an unspecified majority or a specific single person.

In layman's terms, auto-retail is a business format used by merchants to distribute their own branded products or by users to share and endorse their favorite products in order to achieve marketing results. Merchants, through themselves or any other organizations and individuals, refer products in the form of content distribution, removing the complexity of the intermediate supply chain and allowing products to reach consumers directly.

The benefits of the self-retail marketing model are, firstly, to help merchants establish their own marketing channels, secondly, to bring their own traffic and marketing value to those who refer and share good food and fun, and thirdly, to help consumers buy cost-effective and trustworthy goods.

Background of the emergence of self-retail:

Industry background

Merchants and suppliers have suffered from the economic cold wave and the severe winter of capital, and it is difficult for banks to provide loans at this end, and customers are late to get back the payment for the goods owed by customers at that end, so that they are always facing the risk of the capital chain breakage;

The Internet and the mobile Internet have brought a huge impact on the traditional retail industry; the popularization of mobile Internet has also made the traditional e-commerce industry more and more popular, and has led to the development of a new business model for retailers. The popularization of mobile Internet also makes the traditional e-commerce in the user growth and traffic acquisition of the dividend gradually reached the ceiling.

Users' consumption is upgrading, and previous sales methods are no longer effective

Changes in consumer demand: with the rise of social media, users are able to connect with everything around the clock and across all time zones. Consumers no longer believe in brands' self-improvement advertisements, and they prefer to read reviews, listen to kol, and ask their friends before deciding where to buy goods. Compared to price, they care more about quality and the corresponding value for money.

Changes in shopping habits: more emphasis on the shopping process experience, unplanned impulsive, emotional and personalized consumer behavior rose. Experiential consumption, personalized and diversified goods and services are welcomed by more and more consumers.

Technology continues to evolve, driving industry change

Emerging technologies such as mobile payment, big data, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence are constantly being utilized in the retail e-commerce industry. With the support of technology, the retail industry has been able to realize effective monitoring from the production to the consumption of goods.

5G is coming soon, and 4G traffic is fully open, so that short videos and live streaming and other forms of content distribution are no longer limited by Internet infrastructure bottlenecks.

Three features of self-retail:

Self-retail takes the user himself as the driving point, and interpersonal communication as the main form, each user can become the brand's retail access, so that there can be zero-distance communication between the brand and the user.

Feature 1: Unity of People and Separation of Field and Goods

Self-retailing reshapes the supply chain structure by reconfiguring the retail people, goods and fields.

Let's build a small scenario to make it clearer:

The brand released a product on the self-retail platform, and user A saw it, bought the product, and shot a video related to the product to share it, and user B was attracted by the video shot by A, and clicked on the link to the video to buy the product as well. At this point, user A's identity has been quietly transformed from that of a consumer to that of a retail organization.

The same content grass prying traffic with goods, the difference is that all involved in the referral of the "self-retail" organization do not have to stockpile peddling, there is no capital threshold, and do not participate in the supplier's share of the profits, but only to obtain the goods of the open and transparent commission. The supplier is always directly connected to the consumer.

Feature 2: Self-media communication, thousands of stores, thousands of faces

Based on the scenario above, let's extend it:

Individuals on the self-retail platform can build their own personal IPs, produce content related to the recommended products, or express their own insights on the recommended commodities as they would on any other self-media platform or social platform. When users see your content and desire to buy and order, the traffic you generate is directly realized.

For example, if you create an IP for reading enthusiasts, and a user sees the content of a book you've shared and is attracted to it, he clicks on the link you've recommended and buys it directly from the publisher. But he has previously seen another person who also shared the book and was not attracted to his content. You, on the other hand, can recommend any book from an unlimited number of publishers on this platform, and from there build the value of your own specialized traffic and cash in directly.

"Self-retail" organizations recommend because they like or look good, and users buy because they trust his recommendations.

Feature 3: buy-sell integration, multilateral reciprocity

Everyone spreads, everyone markets, everyone retails, and the fissile word-of-mouth marketing communication interpreted by the theory of the six-degree space is the highest realm of communication science.

Every consumer can participate in the recommendation or sale of goods, what kind of impact will this have on the retail market?

First of all, for for manufacturers, the shortcomings of traditional advertising is to target an unspecified group of people for dissemination, not sure of the effect, not to mention the establishment of data-based marketing feedback. And self-retail social communication model, through the Internet technology provides a more accurate product marketing go, and shorter and more efficient data marketing feedback. Let manufacturers have their own online retail channels, no longer need to store in major stores, and this retail channel is ubiquitous. Equivalent to manufacturers will be their own promoters paratroopers, scattered around the world, and this promoter, you do not have to pay wages and expensive advertising endorsement fees. Equivalent to directly kill the shopping guide, kill the advertising. Cost efficiency double harvest, so he can save the cost and time to invest in carefully polished products and services, forming a virtuous cycle.

The "self-retail" group may be a satisfied consumer of a particular product, a brand controller, a self-media practitioner, a netizen KOL, an unemployed housewife or a professional micro-merchants shopping for practitioners to shift the battlefield. They have no barrier to entry, no need to hoard goods, no marketing pressure, no need to take any risk, can be in the process of easy and pleasant content dissemination will be the flow of cash.

For consumers, the process of choosing to buy a product recommended by someone they believe to be highly credible is itself a pleasurable shopping experience. As opposed to the complex supply chain in the past, the self-retail model empowers suppliers to directly connect with consumers, so consumers are buying the most cost-effective products on the net. If you are happy to shoot a video to share a recommendation to attract other users to buy, but also directly to the praise of the easy cash, spontaneous become a member of the "self-retail" organization.