沃尔玛欲打造线上零售王国

    世界最大的零售商沃尔玛正在努力把自己打造为世界上最全面的购物运营商，无论是在线上还是在线下。沃尔玛希望在这个过程中利用Walmart.com网站吸引大量的新客户。

    《财富》（Fortune）杂志于周二在科罗拉多州阿斯彭举办的科技头脑风暴大会（Brainstorm Tech conference）期间，沃尔玛（WMT）首席信息官卡瑞南•特雷尔以及沃尔玛全球电子商务业务首席执行官内尔•阿什在名为“电子沃尔玛”（E-Walmart）的专题会上讨论了该公司在结合沃尔玛庞大的核心业务与互联网和移动技术方面所做的努力。

    沃尔玛在财富美国500强排行榜上（Fortune 500）位居榜首，去年的销售额达到了惊人的4,660亿美元，在全世界拥有1万多家店面，其中有4,000多家店面位于美国。沃尔玛在使用技术进行物流管理方面一直处于领先地位，如今，它维护的服务器已经多达3.8万台。沃尔玛也正在搭建世界上最大的私有云平台。特雷尔说：“我们在大数据开始流行之前就已经拥有了大数据业务。”她说，沃尔玛今天的产品数据已经达到了“两位数拍字节”，而这些数据来自于沃尔玛的12万家供货商。

    然而，相对而言，它的在线业务较为落后。沃尔玛预计，今年的在线销售额将达到100亿美元。为帮助改变这一现状，沃尔玛于去年聘请了之前在哥伦比亚广播公司互动媒体集团（CBS Interactive）CBS担任负责人的阿什。

    阿什表示，试图把在线业务看成彻底独立的业务这一想法是错误的。他说：“抛弃1万家店面和2.4亿名客户的做法是愚蠢的。”但是，他也不希望看到Walmart.com仅仅成为公司的一个附加业务。他说，最好的策略是打造无缝体验，这样，客户可以随心所欲、随时随地地光顾沃尔玛。

    为了帮助零售大军与阿什和其团队进行对接，沃尔玛打造了一个系统。借助这个系统，沃尔玛在美国所有4,000家门店经理的奖励依据将是各自区域的全部销售业绩，包括线上和线下的销售。阿什说：“这个举措为完整的购物体验带来了140万名拥护者。”

    关于这个体验，其中的一个例子便是公司为去年黑色星期五疯狂购物日所推出的1小时特别保证服务。沃尔玛为三大热销技术型产品亮出了大幅折扣价，包括苹果（Apple）的iPad 2。在这一个小时之内，沃尔玛保证光顾沃尔玛店的任意顾客都能够按这个折扣价购买这款商品。如果店面的商品卖光了，沃尔玛会从客户那搜集信息，然后通过网络兑现订单。

    实现这个目标需要从上到下的协作，即从企业层面一直到所有4,000家店面的销售登记处。阿什和特雷尔说，公司做到了这一点，而且仅用了30天来进行准备。

    至于如何衡量沃尔玛电子商务的成功，阿什表示，顾客可能会来实体店购物，也可能通过移动设备采购，也可能坐在沙发上用笔记本购买，或者结合以上几种方式来购物。如果哪一天，沃尔玛我们不再关心顾客到底是在采用哪种方式进行购物，沃尔玛的电子商务就算成功了。“无论是美国本土的沃尔玛，还是全球的沃尔玛，这就是我们目前正在探索的领域。”（财富中文网）

    译者：翔

    The world's largest retailer is working hard to make itself the world's most seamless operator in shopping -- both on- and offline. It would like to attract a lot of new shoppers to Walmart.com in the process.

    In a session titled "E-Walmart" at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colo., on Tuesday morning, Wal-Mart (WMT) chief information officer Karenann Terrell and Neil Ashe, CEO of global e-commerce for Wal-Mart, talked about the company's efforts to marry the scale of Wal-Mart's core business with Internet and mobile technology.

    Wal-Mart ranks No. 1 on the Fortune 500 with a mammoth $466 billion in sales last year and more than 10,000 stores world-wide, including over 4,000 in the U.S. It has long been a leader in using technology to manage logistics and today supports 38,000 servers. The company is also building the world's largest private cloud. "We had Big Data before Big Data was cool," said Terrell. Today, it has "double-digit petabytes" of product data, she said, from its 120,000 suppliers.

    However, in a relative sense, its online business, projected to be $10 billion in sales this year, has lagged. Ashe was brought in last year from his previous job as the head of CBS Interactive (CBS) to help change that.

    Ashe said that it would be wrong to try to think of the online business as completely separate. "It would be foolish for us to run away from 10,000 stores or 240 million customers," he said. But neither does he want Walmart.com to be merely an add-on. The best strategy, he said, is to create a seamless experience in which a consumer will come to Wal-Mart whenever, wherever makes sense for him or her.

    To align the interests of its retail foot soldiers with Ashe and his crew, the company has created a system in which managers at all 4,000 Wal-Mart stores in the U.S. get credit for all sales in their zip codes, whether on- or offline. "That creates 1.4 million advocates for the holistic shopping experience," said Ashe.

    One example of such an experience was a special one-hour guarantee event the company ran for last year's Black Friday mega shopping day. Wal-Mart offered deep-discount prices on three in-demand tech products, including the Apple (AAPL) iPad 2. Any shopper in a Wal-Mart store during the one-hour window was guaranteed to get that item at the discount price. If the store ran out, Wal-Mart collected information from the customer and fulfilled the order through the web.

    Pulling that off required coordination all the way from the enterprise level down to the registers at point of sale in all 4,000 stores. Ashe and Terrell said the company was able to pull it off with only 30 days of preparation.