What are the applications of WeChat Mini Programs in new retail?

Mini Program is a kind of software that can be used without downloading. It realizes the dream of software being "at your fingertips". Members can open the software by scanning or searching. Mini Programs were also an innovation with a very high threshold. After nearly two years of development, a new Mini Program development environment and developer ecosystem have been constructed. Now, the number of mini programs exceeds one million, covering more than 200 specific industries, and the number of daily active members reaches 200 million. Aladdin predicts that with the further development of the market, the number of mini programs is expected to reach 5 million in 2019; the number of daily active members will exceed 350 million; and the advertising market size will reach 20 billion yuan.

What are the applications of WeChat Mini Programs in new retail?

Since 2018, with the popularity of mini programs, various industries have been trying to find their own profit points from mini program development. Mini programs have also been implemented to support subway, bus services, etc. in many cities. In 2017, mini programs created 1.04 million jobs, with their social impact continuing to grow.

Embracing New Retail, Mini Programs Will Go Further and Further At the Alibaba Cloud Conference in October 2016, Alibaba’s Jack Ma first proposed New Retail in his speech, “In the next ten or twenty years, there will be no e-commerce, only New Retail.”
Luo Zhenyu mentioned a word in his 2017 New Year's Eve speech - "total national time value", which means that the demographic dividend has disappeared, and the total time netizens spend on the Internet has limited growth. Whoever can occupy more time of members will be the winner. This is a more subtle understanding of new retail.

Mini programs are a powerful weapon for new retail. There are different understandings of new retail in the market. The more general statement is that new retail is a new retail model in which companies rely on the Internet to upgrade and transform the production, circulation and sales processes of goods by using advanced technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence, thereby reshaping the business structure and ecosystem, and deeply integrating online services, offline experiences and modern logistics. When it comes to linking the online and offline nodes of new retail, mini programs are the most tenacious and flexible. They are more effective than APPs and have more practical functions than micro stores of official accounts.

New species, new retail, new ways of playing. As a new species, mini programs are inherently not exclusive to online e-commerce companies. They are an open ecosystem that requires us to discover industry models and ways of playing ourselves. Offline stores can also be empowered by mini programs, but the key issue is whether the company is determined to introduce mini programs and what methods to use to integrate with mini programs.
To understand the relationship between mini programs and new retail, you actually need to clarify three questions: 1. Can mini programs help companies transform into new retail? 2. What tasks can mini programs accomplish in a company’s new retail transformation process? 3. Can the new retail of mini programs meet customers’ needs and enhance their experience?

It is too one-sided to understand mini programs simply from the perspective of trends, large traffic, and entry points. The core is to solve the fundamental changes in business. Some people believe that, to a certain extent, especially for small and medium-sized businesses, "Mini Programs are new retail". Completing the layout of Mini Programs in the business model has completed 80% of the new retail layout, and the remaining 20% ​​is the layout of other platforms, which can be done or not.