When a product is introduced, there will be an expected positioning based on the current sales of other competing platforms or the marketing of forum websites.
In the actual operation process, it may not be able to meet expectations due to different user groups or different sales strategies, or the sales of products will decline over time and other reasons will eventually withdraw from the historical stage. In order to ensure traffic, the platform must continue to expand into new products. Just like a river, it must be flowing to be alive, otherwise it will only become a pool of stagnant water.
In order, in the process of purchasing and managing commodities, we introduce the management concept of "commodity life cycle", and implement different management strategies for commodities based on different cycles.
1. Introduction period
The introduction period refers to the discovery of new products that can be introduced in the early stage of procurement through competitive country email list product research, extension product mining, user research, and big data analysis to determine the feasibility of new product introduction.
At this stage, it is mainly necessary to confirm product positioning, estimate gross profit, find suitable suppliers, etc. Different product positioning has different evaluation indicators after introduction, so it is very important to clarify the positioning in the early stage. For example, drainage funds focus on evaluating sales, while Profitable funds focus on assessing gross profit.
2. Growth period
The growth period is usually 1-3 months, and the assessment indicators are usually based on the historical sales of products of the same type and positioning as a reference to ensure that the product richness will be enhanced after the introduction of the product, and the vitality of the platform will also be enhanced. rising.
Growth stage platforms need to provide opportunities for newly introduced commodities to grow, that is, exposure. Many self-operated platforms will also have specific new product modules. Users can directly view the recent new products in this module to improve the transaction rate of new products.
3. Maturity
After the growth period, normal product sales, page views, gross profit and other indicators will reach a relatively stable state.
In this stage, the person in charge of commodities needs to pay attention to cost optimization and tap the gross profit space. At the same time, based on stable KPIs, the monitoring thresholds are set, and abnormal fluctuations in data are automatically monitored to detect abnormalities in time.
Under the condition of stable gross profit and out-of-stock rate, optimize the turnover of goods, and set a reasonable order cycle and periodic replenishment amount in combination with sales. At present, many systems used internally by enterprises have the ability to automatically trigger replenishment.
4. Study period
During the growth period, if the product fails to reach the expected sales target or there are other problems, the inspection period will be entered.
to enter the inspection period or directly enter the recession period/elimination period based on the actual results and actual operation conditions (for example, during the Spring Festival or during the same period when there is a big promotion of similar products on the platform, which will affect the new product indicators).
Or in the mature period, when the quality of the goods and customer complaints reach a certain amount (based on user settings), it will be necessary to trigger the goods to enter the inspection period.
The inspection period is equivalent to the "last chance" of this product. Therefore, a targeted PDCA (plan-do-control-action) rectification plan is required for the products entering the inspection period. If it is simply considered that the growth period is prolonged, then It doesn't make sense anymore.
To analyze the reasons why the product entered the inspection period and formulate an improvement plan, the responsibility must be placed on the person (usually the purchasing classmate corresponding to the product), and finally judge whether the problem is solved based on the sales during the inspection period. If it continues to be unsolved, it will eventually enter the phase-out period.