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【中文标题】“混乱胜过专业”—百思买在中国学到的一课 【原文标题】Best Buy's lesson from China: Cluttered beats curated 【登载媒体】美国CNN新闻
【来源地址】http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/10/news/international/bestbuy_china_fivestar.fortune/index.htm 【译者】陈晨 【翻译方式】人工
【声明】本翻译供Anti-CNN使用，未经AC或译者许可，不得转载。
【译文】 Kit R. Roane, contributorFebruary 11, 2011: 4:12 PM ET
FORTUNE -- Sometimes it's better to be late to a party. By the time Best Buy made a splash in China in 2006, large domestic rivals had already spread their tentacles across the nation, the Wal-Marts of the world were becoming entrenched, and massive PC malls -- a sort of messy and hyperactive physical Ebay (EBAY, Fortune 500) -- had already sprouted up across the landscape like mushrooms.
财富-有时候晚点到一个派对会更好。在2006年百思买在中国引起轰动之前，国内大型竞争对手已经将他们的触手延伸至全国乏味，而沃尔玛则在全世界都已经根深蒂固了，另外大量个人电脑商业街-一种散乱且极度活跃的实体式“EBAY”也已经雨后春笋般在这片大陆上展现出来。
But a birds-eye view and a slow-go approach has helped Best Buy navigate the country's treacherous retail trade and experiment without losing its signature blue shirt.
但是这种俯视的角度和一种缓慢进行的方法帮助百思买在这个国家失去信用的零售商交易中航行和实验，并且不会失去他名下的员工（他们的制服蓝色的）。
In China, Best Buy put away the company's orthodox retail approach. Instead it benched its brand, decided to grow through acquisition and is only now slowly wooing customers and vendors towards the Best Buy way five years after arriving. At the same time, what it's learning in China may soon influence how it does business in the United States as well. The world's largest consumer-electronics retailer, Best Buy (BBY, Fortune 500) prides itself on having knowledgeable and unbiased sales people who can help bewildered customers choose from a preferred selection of electronics, which run the gamut from iPads and computers to refrigerators and electric motorcycles. In California, for example, the company will soon offer charging stations for electric cars, with their Geek Squads dispatched to help with home installation.
在中国，百思买放弃了传统企业零售方法。五年以来，百思买正在慢慢的通过他自己的方法代替他放置的品牌来向消费者和供应商寻求帮助，并且依靠他的员工来保持增长。同时，在中国正在学到的进行商业运营模式也许很快影响到在美国商业运行的情况。这个世界上最大的消费类电子产品零售商，百思买（bby，财富500强）以他们知识渊博且毫无偏见的销售人员为荣，这些销售员可以帮助那些困扰的消费者挑选一个更合适的电子产品，这些产品涵盖了从ipad到电脑到冰箱再到电动摩托车所有范围。
But Chinese consumers aren't used to the Best Buy process. Nor do the majority of them want it -- at least not right now. They've grown up shopping for electronics at cluttered mom-and-pop shops where business is fueled by word of mouth, or at big-box retailers such as Gome Electrical Appliances or Suning Appliance Group, where competing vendors display and sell their own massive array of wares. Kal Patel, who head's Best Buy's Asia operations, says that early on, Best Buy experimented with a US-style store in Shanghai. "We curated everything. We made choices in rice cookers and choices in PCs," he says. But customers wanted the old system, where they "choose for themselves from thousands of things."
但是中国的消费者们现在还不习惯百思买的流程，大多数消费者也不需要，至少是现在。消费者们在那些通过口述提供商业服务的凌乱的家庭式经营商店中购买电子产品，或者是在一个写类似于国美电器和苏宁电器的仓储式零售商，在这些地方竞争关系的供应商一起展示和销售他们自己品牌的大量产品。百思买亚洲运营的领导人Kal Patel说在早期，百思买试验过在上海进行美国式的商店。“我们已经考虑了所有的事情，并且选择好了米饭的烹饪工具和电脑。”他说，但是消费者们需要原来的旧的系统，在那里他们可以从数千中商品中为他们自己选好东西。
"What we learned, very crucially, is that in China you cannot make revolutionary change. You have to work at the pace of the Chinese consumer," he adds.
“我们所了解到的，非常关键的是在中国你不能自己做出革命性的改变，你必须紧跟着消费者的步调进行工作。”他又说。
Other foreign retailers have learned that lesson the hard way. For every Carrefour -- a supermarket chain known or having the pulse of the Chinese consumer, whether the need is fresh chicken blood or nearly-kicking chicken feet -- there has been a Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500) (originally derided for its American-centric view and for trying to strong-arm Chinese unions and suppliers) and a Starbucks (SBUX, Fortune 500) (accused of "trampling Chinese culture" after it opened shop in Beijing's Forbidden City).
其他国外的零售商们也在艰难历程中学到了这一课。对于每个家乐福分店-那个已经了解中国消费者脉搏的著名连锁超市。不管这个需求是新鲜的鸡血还是鸡腿，沃尔玛（wmt，财富500强）（开始因为他的美国中心式观点和试图强制对待中国工会和供应商而被嘲笑），还有星巴克（sbux，财富500强）（在北京紫禁城开店后被以“践踏中国文化”而被控诉。）
Best Buy continues to be guided by the caution of its former CIO, Bob Willett, who once noted that "if you look at any of the companies that have gone international and you dig into the reasons why they failed it is because they moved too fast."
百思买持续遵循着他的前任首席信息官的警言，Bob Willett，他曾经提到了：如果你观察下那些已经进入国际化的公司，然后分析那些他们失败的原因，你会发现是因为他们进行的太快了。
In China, no Western behemoth is more deliberate or, well, slow. Best Buy has only opened eight branded stores in the world's most fertile consumer ecosystem -- where more than $2.5 billion in retail sales still grow at double-digit clips.
在中国，没有一家西方巨头更从容不迫或者说更慢了。百思买在全世界八个最富饶的消费者生态系统中开设了分店，这些地方现有超过25亿美元的零售业务而且还在以两位数的速度增长。
And their purpose is more experimental than anything else, says Patel. The real China strategy is being put to work at Jiangsu Five Star Appliance Company, in which Best Buy took controlling stake in 2006 for about $180 million, then bought out fully in 2008. Five Star, the nation's third- largest electronic retailer, runs 166 stores and has grown by often saturating a particular province's second- and third-tier cities.
Patel说他们的目的是比其他一切东西都更具有实验性。真实的中国战略是正在江苏被投入运行中的五星电器公司，仅在2006年，百思买就有这家公司超过1.8亿美元的股份，并在2008年收购全部股份。五星，这个国家第三大的电器用品零售商，运营着166家店面，而且通过不断充实这个特殊的省的二、三线城市市场来不断增长。（个人觉得五星比起京东神马的售后和产品，快递都差了一个档次）
Retailing the Chinese way
按照中国的方式进行零售
The purchase gave Best Buy immediate reach into China, but more importantly, says Patel, it gave the company a way "to learn and understand the nuances" behind how Chinese consumers shop for electronics.
Patel说这个支点给予了百思买迅速把手伸入中国的机会，但是更重要的是他给了这个公司一种学习和理解中国消费者购买电器产品背后的细微差别的方法。
One big issue for all retailers in China, explains Professor Marshall Meyer, of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, is that Chinese consumers are extremely price conscious while also carrying "strong local preferences." They also like lots of selection and the ability to touch products before they make a deal.
马歇尔迈耶，宾夕法尼亚沃顿商学院的一名教授，他说：在中国对于所有零售商一个重要的争论点就是中国消费者极其注意价格，同时具有很强的本地偏好的思想。他们也喜欢有许多的选择和在交易之前能够接触到产品的机会。
This is evident in the PC malls where many of the country's personal computers are sold. There, shoppers troll for electronics among hundreds of small vendors crammed together in kiosks. On the surface, the malls appear to be ripe for cleaning up with a little Western retail know-how, given the cluttered appearance and the surfeit of counterfeit goods at many stores. But Patel says that a closer looks reveals that these PC malls "are like ant farms and the ants are very organized."
在这个国家的许多个人电脑被售出的地方，电脑商业街，这一点很明显。在那里，购买者在数百个被塞入类似于报刊凉亭摊位的小供货商之中挑选电子产品。从些凌乱的表象和这些小店铺里面过分充足的假冒伪劣产品的表面上看，这些商业街似乎已经成熟到可以用一些西方的零售实践知识和技巧来收拾干净了。但是patel说：如果更仔细的观察，就会发现这些电脑商业街就像一个蚂蚁农场，而这些蚂蚁有着很好的组织。
Consumers police the vendors, which survive or fail through word of mouth. And if one vendor doesn't have a product, "the guy will run around the rest of the mall and find it for you," says Patel. "How can you compete with that?"
消费者着掌控着这些供应商，通过口头方式营销，生存下去或者被淘汰。而且如果某个供货商没有某种产品，“这个家伙会跑边剩余的整条商业街直到为你找到这种产品。”patel说，“你怎么能竞争过那种方式？”
Five Star is where Best Buy is trying to compete, with some success. In 2006, Five Star had less than $1 billion in revenue, compared with $1.6 billion now. Meanwhile, same-store sales have grown between 20% and 30% a year and continue to accelerate, and the chain has continued to have "significant gross net margin improvement" since its purchase, according to Best Buy, which does not break out its Five Star operations data.
五星电器是百思买实验与之竞争的战场，并且他们取得了一些胜利。在2006年五星电器的税收还少于10亿，而现在已经有16亿了。同时，同一个店铺销售业绩增长速度达到了20%到30%，而且还在加速。连锁店持续做出了巨大的重量净边际提高效应，根据百思买所述，他的购买物品还没有打破五星电器运营数据。
It has made these gains in a sometimes cutthroat environment -- someone even put broken glass on the escalators of Best Buy's Shanghai store to disrupt its opening day -- by keeping an eye on both its customer's tastes and government wants, and only importing the Best Buy ethos a little at a time.
在这个竞争激烈的环境中（有人甚至在百思买上海分店的开业日把碎玻璃扔到了他们的自动扶梯上来捣乱）百思买通过时刻留意顾客们的口味和政府的需求收益颇多，另外每次都引入了些百思买的道德精神。
For instance, in order to keep up with local competitors like Gnome, which has more scale, higher brand awareness and better government connections, Five Star assiduously follows China's government edicts. When China's government announced that its eleventh "Five-Year Plan" would promote greater energy efficiency and "greener" consumption, Five Star cut deals with its vendors to make sure its stores could offer best-in-breed solar water heaters and other energy efficient appliances at the right prices.
例如，为了跟上“国美”那些更大规模，更高知名度和拥有更良好的政府关系的本地竞争者，五星电器孜孜不倦的遵循着中国政府颁布的法令。但中国政府宣布第十一个“五年计划”将促进更好的能源效率和更为绿色的消费方式时，五星电器切断了与部分供应商的交易来确保他店里的太阳能热水器和其他一些能效电器都有适当的价格中的最好品类。
Now that the government is pushing product recycling and the idea of "inclusive growth," through the subsidy-led expansion of retail chains into China's smaller towns, Best Buy is figuring out how to roll out a version of its US-based recycling program in China and looking for ways to set up Five Star in towns so small that, as Patel puts it, "your marketing is the town crier."
现在政府又在小型城市通过津贴引导的方式来扩张销售商供应链以推动“产品回收”和“内需增长”的理念，百思买正在考虑怎样在“美式回收项目”为基础上在中国展开一个的新版本，并且寻找出如何在那些小的Patel将之描述为“在那里你的市场就是整个城镇的公告处”的城镇中开设五星电器的办法。
An East-West hybrid
一个中西结合的混血儿
Since Chinese consumers still want lots of choices, Five Star continues to use the same retail model of its larger competitors, which basically gives each competing manufacturer a concession to run and stock a particular section of the store. (No retailer could afford to supply the same sort of variety of brands and products by themselves.)
既然中国消费者们仍然需要多样的选择，五星电器就得和他的大型竞争者保持相同的零售模式，这种模式基本上给予了每个竞争性的生产商在同一家店里不同的区域里经营的特权。（没有一家零售商可以承担自行提供同一类别的不同产品和不同品牌）
But Patel says Best Buy tweaks the concept as much as it can behind the scenes, so that consumers are offered a better experience. The company brings every Five Star store manager to Minneapolis for training in the Best Buy way, fosters communication through regular teleconferences and forges closer relationships with its vendors' commission-driven employees, so there is less turnover and greater loyalty to the chain.
但是Patel说百思买在这样的背景下也在尽可能的作出微调，为了给消费者提供一个更好的体验。这个公司把五星电器的每个店面经理带到了明尼阿波利斯(美国明尼苏达州东南部城市)，进行百思买方式的培训，并且通过定期的电话会议来促进与供应商那些“完成任务驱动”型的雇员的交流沟通，形成更为紧密的关系，所以在五星电器有着更低的人员流动和对产业链的更高的忠诚度。
Realizing that Chinese consumers may want the immense selection but still desire less-biased help in navigating the products, Best Buy has begun paying Five Star customer service agents to walk around several of its stores, answering customer questions about products and helping them navigate between vendors so they can better compare. In a few Five Star concept stores, Best Buy has experimented more forcefully with China's prevailing retail design, doing away with the vendor-led model in a particular category -- like small appliances -- and splitting the store's mix of workers so that half are salaried Five Star employees who receive no sales commission.
意识到中国消费者可能需要宽广的选择空间并且在需要没有偏见的产品选择方面的帮助之后，百思买开始让五星电器的客户服务代表们在自己的几个店铺周围来回走动，回答客户关于产品方面的要求，并且帮助他们在不同的供应商之间进行比较和挑选。在一些五星电器概念店里，百思买试验了更为强力的中国盛行的零售店设计方案，废除了以供应商为引导特殊的分类（例如小型家用电器），并且将那些混合在一起的员工分开，对没有完成销售任务的员工付一半薪水。
Best Buy isn't dictating too much from above, and, in fact, much of the innovations taking place at its stores come from the ground. For instance, because some Chinese holidays make America's Black Friday seem tame, a group of Five Star employees culled through store data to find their best customers, then sold them "reservations" guaranteeing them holiday prices on specific items and no crowds. The idea, which has now been adopted by other Five Star stores in China, provided a competitive advantage during an important holiday season," says Patel. "The uptake was good. [The selected customers] bought more profitable products and they were able to avoid the mob and take their time."
百思买不会从上层发出太多的命令，事实上，很多创新来自于基础店面。例如，因为中国的一些节日让美国的黑色周五黯然失色，所以五星电器的一些雇员从店内数据库中挑选了他们的优质客户，并且告知如果客户“预订产品”，可以在平日就享受一些产品的假日特价并且不用在假日那么拥挤的环境中购物。现在这个主意已经被中国的其他五星电器营业点所采用，“并且为我们在假日季节提供了一个具有竞争力的优势”Patel说道，“那些被选取的客户非常优质”他们购买了许多可以盈利的产品，他们自己也避免了拥挤的购物环境和浪费时间。
Versions of the reservation idea have now been tried at Best Buy stores in the United States. Patel says that more lessons from China may be on the way. Noting that an increasing number of Best Buy customers are lower-income and often immigrant, he says Best Buy is exploring the idea of opening a "raw model" Five Star-style appliance store here to bring in those customers "who like a little bit of chaos in the stores and the search for bargains.
例如“预订产品”这种方法的翻版现在已经在美国的百思买店铺被采用了。Patel说我们可能会在中国学到更多的东西。注意到百思买客户中低收入和流动人群越来越多，他说，百思买正在探索开设一种“原始模式”的五星电器类型的家电店铺，并引入这些可能有稍许混乱的消费者和讨价还价的方式。
在这篇新闻发出11天后，百思买宣布因“水土不伏”退出中国市场 百思买官方声明http://www.bestbuy.com.cn/ 相关新闻http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2011-02-22/130521994482.shtml | 
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发表于 2011-2-23 11:01
本人更喜欢去旗舰店买电脑和电器~，不然万一买到假货，就亏了
