沃爾瑪電商業務能超越亞馬遜嗎

Many years ago it became obvious to some of us that online retail would continue to grow at a much faster pace than brick and mortar stores. This appeared to be less obvious to traditional retailers until more recently. In 2001, I suggested to some colleagues that Wal-Mart WMT 0.29% should acquire Amazon to gain an edge in online retail (Amazon stock was about $5 a share at the time). This idea was scoffed at. I bought Amazon AMZN 0.07% stock but, clearly, didn’t maximize my execution as I sold it within 18 months for 3 times the return (it’s now $317). I’m guessing there were also some prescient investment bankers who received a similar response after suggesting that Wal-Mart buy Amazon. Who knows what the world would be like today had that occurred, as Amazon could easily have been derailed under Wal-Mart management.

多年前，一些有識之士就確信，電商的增長速度將比實體店快得多。在傳統零售商看來，這一點並沒有那麼顯而易見——直至最近。2001年，我曾對一些同事表示，沃爾瑪公司（Wal-Mart）應該收購亞馬遜公司（Amazon），以獲得在線零售的優勢（當時亞馬遜的股價約爲5美元）。但這個提法卻遭到了嘲笑。我當時買了亞馬遜的股票，但很顯然並沒有賺到最大回報，因爲不到18個月我就以3倍價格賣掉了（現在股價是317美元）。我想，當時有些富有預見的投資銀行家在提出沃爾瑪應該收購亞馬遜這樣的建議後，也受到了類似嘲諷。如果當時這個建議成真，就不知道今天的世界會是什麼模樣，因爲沃爾瑪治下的亞馬遜是很容易脫軌的。

Now, traditional retailers are under extraordinary pressure as online has matured and is expected to exceed $300 billion in U.S. sales in 2014. As online retail has claimed a larger and larger share of the overall retail business, it has sucked the air out of brick and mortar stores, and offline growth has come to a virtual standstill. With this emergence, many traditional players have finally seen the light. Wal-Mart has announced it will be increasing its online investments by a substantial amount in an effort to try to close the gap against Amazon. There has been much press about the acceleration in Wal-Mart’s online sales, and as a result, there are some who will mistakenly look at the relative growth numbers of Amazon vs. Wal-Mart’s online store and start to believe Wal-Mart is closing the gap. This could not be further from the truth as it is deceptive to compare larger numbers to smaller ones.

而如今，羽翼豐滿的電商正在讓傳統零售商承受巨大壓力。2014年，美國的在線零售額有望超過3000億美元。隨着電商在零售業所佔的份額越來越大，它已搶走了實體店的人氣，線下增長實際上已停滯不前。在這種情勢下，很多傳統零售商終於有點開竅了。沃爾瑪日前宣佈該公司將大幅增加在線投資，以努力縮小與亞馬遜的差距。有不少媒體報道稱，沃爾瑪的在線銷售額正在快速增長。結果，有些人就會誤讀亞馬遜與沃爾瑪網店的相對增速，並開始相信沃爾瑪正在縮小差距。但這實際上與事實相去甚遠，因爲單純將大數字與較小數字相比是有一定欺騙性的。

One reason to believe that Wal-Mart is catching up is because in the current fiscal year, the retailer is expected to grow online sales by 30% while is Amazon “only” expected to post a 20% gain, according to consensus Wall Street estimates. There are four problems with focusing on this number:

相信沃爾瑪正迎頭趕上的一大理由是，據華爾街的一致估算，沃爾瑪本財年網店銷售額預計增長30%，而亞馬遜則“僅”增長20%。光看這一數字存在如下四大問題：

1. A portion of Wal-Mart’s growth is deceptive because it partly consists of shifting sales away from its physical stores to its online store.

1.沃爾瑪的增長額中有一部分頗具欺騙性，因爲它部分是由其實體店轉移到網店的銷售額構成的。

2. Wal-Mart’s growth comes off of a much smaller number. In the chart below we look at the actual dollar growth of Amazon and Wal-Mart last year. While Wal-Mart is expected to increase online sales by a very respectable $3 billion, Amazon’s gain of $14.5 billion is nearly 5 times Wal-Mart’s dollar gain, and the gain alone will exceed Wal-Mart’s total online sales.

2.沃爾瑪的增速基於一個小得多的數字。下圖顯示的是亞馬遜和沃爾瑪去年銷售收入的實際增長額。儘管沃爾瑪有望增長30億美元（這已令人肅然起敬了），但亞馬遜145億美元的增長額是沃爾瑪的近5倍，僅這一數字就遠超沃爾瑪的整體在線銷售額。

3. The shift of overall retail toward online from physical stores has pressured Wal-Mart’s growth in its brick and mortar operations. Last year, Wal-Mart’s overall US revenue growth, including online sales, was 1.6% with same store sales actually declining slightly.

3.零售業整體從實體店向網上轉移對沃爾瑪實體店的經營構成了極大壓力。去年沃爾瑪在美國的總銷售額增長率是1.6%，而同店銷售額實際上是有所下降的。

4. Amazon sales are recognized on a net basis. Since an increasing proportion of the sales are net dollars (at very high margins) received for selling other merchants products, the amount of sales that it controls far exceeds its reported revenue. They also report what amount of their services revenue is from the combination of Amazon Web Services credit card and advertising. If we assume that the remainder is their share of third-party merchant revenue (also known as Amazon Marketplace) (which is reported on a net basis) then we are able to calculate gross third-party merchant revenue by year. The conversion of that revenue to products sold by third-party merchants is a matter of projecting what Amazon’s average referral fee is for the marketplace. If we assume that Amazon receives 15%, on average, of total marketplace sales then we are able to calculate the total of all product revenue generated by Amazon. In 2013, this would be $125 billion rather than the $74 billion reported by them as total revenue. And this total would be up 28% rather than the reported growth of 22% for the company.

4.亞馬遜的銷售額是按照淨值確認的。由於這些銷售額中日益增長的部分爲銷售其他商家產品獲得的淨收入（利潤極高），因此該公司實際掌控的銷售額遠超其所報收入。亞馬遜還披露了該公司從亞馬遜網絡服務（Amazon Web Services）信用卡和廣告中獲取的服務收入。如果我們假定剩餘銷售額是亞馬遜從第三方商家——也被稱爲亞馬遜市場（Amazon Marketplace）——收入中獲得的分成（也是按淨值確認），那就可以計算出第三方商家每年的總收入。將這部分收入換算爲第三方商家銷售的商品，就可算出亞馬遜從這個市場中所獲的平均推介費。假定亞馬遜收取的平均推介費爲該市場總銷售額的15%，那就可以算出亞馬遜催生的所有產品銷售總收入。2013年，這個數字就是1250億美元，而不是該公司自己報告的740億美元總收入。這一總數還意味着公司的銷售額增長率是28%，而不是公司報稱的22%。

Amazon has been secretive about its third-party retailer business but does report the breakout of total services revenue from direct product revenue.

亞馬遜一直對其第三方零售業務諱莫如深，但卻報告稱，從直接產品收入中獲取的總服務收入大幅增長。

Given the fact that Amazon is adding sales (in dollars) at 5 times the rate of Wal-Mart online, the question is whether it has enough inherent advantages to continue to significantly outpace Wal-Mart. The answer is yes. The obvious reasons include: a superior online brand, a multiple of customers that are regulars, more knowledge of how to use data, etc .. While these are not easy to replicate, if at all, an even more important issue is whether Wal-Mart’s distribution network could rival Amazon’s?

既然亞馬遜銷售額（以美元計）增長速度是沃爾瑪電商的五倍，問題就在於它是否有足夠的內在優勢繼續大幅領先沃爾瑪。答案是毫無疑問的。顯而易見的理由有：卓越的電商品牌，大量的回頭客，更精通數據應用，等等。儘管這些因素都很難複製，但更重要的問題是，沃爾瑪的銷售網絡是否能勝過亞馬遜的呢？

Amazon currently has 125 active warehouses that serve end-customers around the world while Wal-Mart only has a handful. This may seem surprising for the world’s largest retailer but keep in mind that a distribution center for resupplying stores with inventory is a completely different animal than a warehouse for shipping directly to end customers. Recently, Wal-Mart has announced plans to build a 1.2 million square-foot warehouse in Indiana dedicated to e-commerce. Wal-Mart currently uses its 4,200 existing retail stores as a nexus for shipping to end customers. Approximately 20% of online orders are now shipped from a store. This strategy is likely much less efficient and could prove quite costly relative to Amazon warehouse that have been optimized solely for online orders.

目前亞馬遜有125個在用庫房爲全球終端用戶服務，而沃爾瑪卻只有不多的幾個。這似乎有點讓人吃驚，因爲沃爾瑪畢竟是全球最大的零售商。但要知道，爲實體店補充存貨所用的分銷中心，和直接運往終端用戶所用的庫房是完全不同的兩種東西。最近沃爾瑪宣佈，該公司計劃在印第安納州修建120萬平方英尺，專供電子商務使用的庫房。沃爾瑪目前將其現有的4200家零售店作爲向終端用戶發貨的樞紐。約有20%的在線訂單是從這些店發貨的。相對亞馬遜的庫房而言，這種戰略的效率可能要低得多，而且成本可能要高得多。

I’ve chosen to compare Amazon to Walmart, the retailer with the greatest capacity to compete with them. Others will be even harder pressed to hold off online retailers.

本文我選了亞馬遜與沃爾瑪進行對比，沃爾瑪畢竟是最有實力和電商競爭的零售商。其他零售商當然更難抵禦電商的攻勢。