Why Is The 100 Year Old Shop In Britain Still Enjoying Outstanding Performance Under The Strong Squeeze Of The Electricity Supplier?

Even if the physical retail industry has undergone tremendous changes, John Lewis, a 100 year old British shop, is suffering.

The strong squeeze is still outstanding.

In the fiscal year ending January 30th this year, John Lewis department's adjusted operating profit rose 0.2% to 250 million 200 thousand pounds on year, net sales rose 2.8% to 4 billion 557 million 400 thousand pounds, a 3.1% strong increase over sales, while revenue increased 2.7% to 3 billion 662 million 800 thousand pounds.

Sector performance was the best, net sales increased by 6.2%, household sector and electrical and home technology sectors increased by 4.1% and 3% respectively, while online sales grew by 17%.

In the UK, John Lewis is an ancient name, the traditional department store that opened its first store in London in 1864, and has been the backbone of the British retail industry for 150 years.

Today, John Lewis owns John Lewis department stores, Waitrose supermarkets, John Lewis outlets (online mail order business), Green Bee (service providers, including travel agencies, insurance, telecommunications services).

Fully catering to customers' needs

John Lewis was named the best mobile retailer in the UK by EPiServer, a digital marketing company.

More obvious than the performance figures is John Lewis.

It is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.

In a survey conducted by consulting firm Verdict, John Lewis was named Britain's most popular retailer for fourth consecutive years.

Customer trust and recognition are not innate. Since 1925, John Lewis has adhered to the quality pledge "Never knowingly undersold" (never deliberately selling at a low price), meaning that it is not discounted in price, quality and service. It is also inseparable from the whole staff partnership, so that every employee is full of sense of responsibility and can provide customers with the best service.

It is also important that John Lewis constantly analyze and understand the changing behaviors and trends of consumers. It is inseparable from all possible technologies, methods and means to respond to and satisfy the needs of consumers.

The development of Internet enables consumers to understand product information, compare prices and collect product reviews constantly through new technologies and tools, so today's consumer demand, correct products, reasonable prices and easy shopping experience.

In a survey of 6000 consumers from 8 countries, Accenture found that most respondents thought that the priority of retailers to improve their shopping experience was to integrate physical stores, networks and mobile terminals.

In order to attract these customers and succeed in a complex and competitive environment, retailers must change their business strategies according to these requirements and become seamless retailers.

John Lewis has achieved seamless switching between customers in physical stores, online stores or mobile terminals.

For example, consumers can browse in the physical store. They can query prices and orders on the mobile terminal. Consumers can choose to pick up goods at the store or deliver goods to the door. Consumers can pick up goods from more than 5000 neighbourhood shops that they cooperate with John Lewis on their way to work.

Because of its comprehensive experience in providing customers with mobile terminals, John Lewis has been named the best mobile retailer in the UK by EPiServer, a digital marketing company.

Today, if consumers are rich in shopping channels and choices, if the stores can provide more functions, they may attract more customers to come shopping.

John Lewis has made various attempts in this area, such as opening its own glasses Center at Westfield Stratford branch, providing eye CT inspection, optometry, eyeglass, eyeglass frames, contact lenses and other services. In cooperation with Travel Company Kuoni, it offers travel booking in some John Lewis stores, and cooperation with Hotel Chocolat of monopoly chocolate, and stores in some stores.

Bars and catering services were also opened in some branches.

Waitrose supermarkets also offer cafes in restaurants, while bars and restaurants are opened in some stores.

These increased services clearly led to the sale of other goods. John Lewis official data showed that customers who had eaten in the restaurant service were more likely to spend time browsing shops and other commodities, and 80% of the customers bought other products after dining in the store.

Many of the measures that John Lewis caters to consumers originates from the collection and analysis of customer purchase data, and summarizes and explores the changes in customer purchase patterns and trends.

In addition to these data, John Lewis has its own consumer insight report to better understand consumer groups.

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How to play the Internet

If you want to build a reputation and get a return on investment, you also need to implement strategy execution and digital integration after successful advertising.

With the rise of the electricity supplier, the good time of the traditional department store industry has been much worse than before. In order to get customers back from the electricity supplier, the annual Christmas shopping season is the last thing that businesses will pass away.

There are many creative video ads in the Christmas shopping season in the UK. In order to seize the business opportunities, the major department stores have no problem at all, but John Lewis's advertising always wins the game.

Some people say that John Lewis is not only one of the most popular department stores in the UK, but also known as the department store that will be the most popular advertising agency.

Her family's Christmas advertisements are always filled with love and are eagerly awaited by many people every year.

Maybe many people know it through John Lewis's Christmas advertisement, but more people who know it know Christmas through their Christmas advertisements, and think about humanity and family again.

The daily mail once said, "John Lewis's Christmas advertisement has become an important part of the countdown to Christmas every year, and the publication of advertisements means that this year's Christmas is coming."

With the popularity of all kinds of social channels, John Lewis is increasingly using the Internet to promote.

Their ads in 2012 only got 6 million playback on YouTube and 16 million in 2013.

In 2014, he got 25 million views on YouTube, and the John Lewis super warm Christmas advertisement in 2015. After three days of YouTube online, the number of hits exceeded 10 million.

The reason why JohnLewis's advertisement has such a strong influence is that it has always been based on emotional care and is based on the insight of human nature, so it always touches the softest part of human heart.

And John Lewis's insight into consumers is far more than the spiritual realm of human nature.

In addition to the creativity of advertisements, John Lewis carries out "search engine optimization" (SEO), adding key words in its advertisements to search engines, and gets a large number of hits.

In addition, John Lewis has embedded its own website links in every video, making full use of the heat and speed of the video.

With the Internet and social media, wonderful TV advertisements will have an everlasting platform.

But good advertising is only the first step to success.

If a brand wants to build a reputation and get a return on investment, it also needs to do well in strategy execution and digital integration after successful advertising.

Take the 2015 "Man on the moon" (the man on the moon) "John Lewis Christmas advertisement" as an example. This advertisement cost 1 million pounds (9 million 700 thousand yuan) to produce expenses, and its topic marketing, coupled with the diffusion power of the Internet, has already exceeded the income of an advertisement alone.

In the annual customer satisfaction evaluation of retail consulting firm Verdict Retail, John Lewis was elected the best retailer in the UK for the 10 time in 5 years, 4 times second, 1 times 3.

But John Lewis is not satisfied with the existing advantages. They have taken many measures to get closer to the needs of consumers.

Embrace new technologies

The new technology will greatly affect the sales performance of traditional entity channel retailing.

In terms of new technology, John Lewis never stops.

John Lewis attaches great importance to the innovation of technology and believes that only innovation can change the retail industry.

In addition to having its own independent laboratory and exploring new technologies and their applications in retailing, the company launched a start-up company last year to find innovative shopping experience and offer it up to 100 thousand pounds in venture capital.

In its furniture and household products category, John Lewis has a customized service called "Any Shape, Any Fabric" (any shape, any fabric). Consumers can view sofa styles, colors and fabric types on the screen of the shop, then manually select and view the effect picture.

In addition, John Lewis began to try to attach RFID tags (RFID) to furniture models and fabrics, so that consumers only need to scan with RFID readers, and the display screen can directly display the effect picture.

This technology is not only convenient for consumers, but also provides convenience for companies to collect data on customer preferences.

John Lewis is also exploring the use of virtual reality 3D imaging technology to display virtual living rooms for customers from all angles, allowing customers to "see" furniture in their own homes, so as to decide whether to buy.

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According to the research of GS1 UK, the global standard group of non-profit organizations, at present, more than 25% of British retailers are using RFID technology besides John Lewis, including Marks&Spencer, Tesco's F&F and George at Asda, and another 20% retailers are trying to use it. 15% of retailers are studying and investigating the technology of using and setting up pilot in the coming months.

In order to support the company's future development, John Lewis plans to build a distribution center in Milton Keynes, the economic hub of the UK, and highly automated is the core of the John Lewis distribution center.

In this distribution center, different storage systems can be combined to meet the requirements of access efficiency and storage density; the movement of goods in the system can be fully automated, and the timely response to stochastic fluctuation orders can be achieved. Order sorting operation and OSR system delivery and picking system will sort according to the order order of each delivery route to facilitate the operation of delivery.

All orders are sent to the delivery buffer area automatically.

The delivery buffer system has 9464 storage locations. The system puts the turnover box into the temporary storage location and takes out according to the required sequence.

According to this order, the orders of each store are selected into the trolley, and different cars correspond to different ordering order so as to simplify the process of goods handling in stores.

Once the correct sequence is determined, the delivery turnover box is automatically loaded into the trolley, and the finished goods are fixed by the packing belt and delivered through the delivery system.

Thanks to highly automated distribution, John Lewis has greatly improved its network distribution capability. It can handle up to 15 thousand turnover boxes per hour at peak hours, at the same time, it also improves the efficiency of distribution centers, reduces the occupied space of sales terminals, and adds time and distribution to increase additional sales opportunities.