Can the traditional Internet cafe industry usher in a new spring with the help of O2O?

The entrance theory has been mentioned constantly along with the development of the Internet. From the PC era to the mobile era, all Internet companies have attempted to establish a strong entrance. In the PC era, Baidu was the most important entrance to the Internet, followed by Tencent's social entrance QQ and Alibaba's e-commerce entrance.

In the PC Internet era, BAT divided the world into three parts. However, in fact, there is another Internet portal that is even larger than BAT, that is, the traditional Internet cafe industry. However, due to the dispersed power and independent operation of the traditional Internet cafe industry, it did not get a share of the Internet dividend this time. Instead, it declined rapidly with the rapid development of the Internet, especially the development of mobile Internet.

Internet-supported industries are drifting away from the Internet

From the Weigongcun Science and Technology Museum during the Yinghaiwei era to the opening of the first Internet cafe in Shanghai, the traditional Internet cafe industry has always existed as a supporting industry for the Internet in the first decade of its development. In the era when BAT had not yet risen, Internet cafes were the undisputed first entrance to the Internet, and almost the vast majority of Chinese netizens learned how to surf the Internet in Internet cafes.

Game companies across the country have also established ground-marketing teams in various places. They travel day and night to Internet cafes, and put their game posters in every corner of the Internet cafes. There are even conflicts and arguments among the ground-marketing teams over development, all with the goal of grabbing this first entrance.

In the enlightenment era of the Internet's wild growth, Internet cafes took on the responsibility of educating netizens and popularizing Internet knowledge, and developed rapidly with huge profits. In the first ten years of the development of the Internet, Internet cafes can almost be said to be the supporting industry of the entire Internet industry. Without the rapid development of Internet cafes across the country, the development speed of China's Internet would not be so fast.

From the perspective of positioning attributes, Internet cafes, as the entry support industry of the Internet, should be the closest to the Internet. But in fact, in the development process of the entire Internet cafe industry, there is almost no trace of the Internet industry. Moreover, with the rapid development of the Internet industry, the Internet cafe industry has begun to take a completely opposite path to the Internet industry. Especially with the development of mobile Internet, the Internet cafe industry has begun to decline more rapidly, and Internet cafes have been closed all over the country.

Retail stores built on the roadside of the Internet

Internet cafes used to be an industry where you could make money without doing anything. In the early days of development, as long as you opened a business, you could just sit back and wait to collect money. With the influx of a large amount of hot money, the technical level of Internet cafe practitioners began to lag behind. A large number of non-technical personnel poured in with funds, which eventually caused the overall thinking of the Internet cafe industry to be out of touch with the rapid development of the Internet.

Since the first Internet cafe opened in Shanghai in 1996, nearly twenty years have passed. Today, the vast majority of Internet cafes across the country do not even have an official Weibo account of their own, and the entire profit model has hardly changed. They still stick to selling Internet time, game cards, and snacks and meals.

Rather than saying that Internet cafes are a supporting industry for the Internet, it is better to say that they are a supermarket. In fact, the things they sell are almost the same as those sold in ordinary small supermarkets. The only difference is the length of time people spend online. Traditional Internet cafe operators have turned Internet cafes from a supporting industry for the Internet into a retail store built on the side of the Internet. This is a very sad thing.

Disadvantages of the traditional Internet cafe industry

1. Lack of management system. The boss of traditional Internet cafes is usually not in the store, and the store manager manages the store on his behalf. The so-called store manager is actually a network administrator with a longer experience and better skills. His main job is to repair the machines and sweep the floor, and then count the incoming and outgoing goods of snacks and beverages and daily accounts. It is equivalent to a combination of cleaning and warehouse management. The rest of the time is spent playing games. In addition, Internet cafes usually have two network administrators who take turns to work, so at least half of the time every day is spent by ordinary network administrators watching the store.

2. Weak marketing concept. This is a chronic disease left over from the era of huge profits. Most of the traditional Internet cafe practitioners are people with certain social connections, and not ordinary people can open an Internet cafe. Internet cafes are just a part of their income. Basically, as long as you can open an Internet cafe, you just need to sit and wait to collect money. So in such an environment, except for activities such as "charge 100 yuan and get 100 yuan free" during the New Year and other festivals, there is almost no concept of marketing, let alone Internet marketing. However, with the in-depth development of the Internet, the days of making money lying down are gone forever.

3. Low working culture. In traditional Internet cafes, except for the store manager, the other practitioners have almost no technical content in their work, which is basically the work of a waiter, but without any commission income, so the overall salary level is low, just around the minimum wage standard. In addition, the boss only comes to collect money once a day and does not take care of things at other times, which further leads to the lack of marketing concept in Internet cafes.

4. Single profit model. As mentioned above, the income of Internet cafes mainly comes from three parts: Internet time, game points and snacks and meals.

5. Dirty and messy environment. The development of the traditional Internet cafe industry is a completely barbaric process. In order to make more money in this era of huge profits, almost all the places in the business premises that can accommodate computers are filled with machines, which has caused environmental problems such as crowded space and poor air circulation in Internet cafes.

In the entire process of reform of the traditional Internet cafe industry, most of them are only focused on levels 4 and 5. Focusing on environmental hygiene, machine configuration and the overall style, the Internet cafe industry is increasingly moving closer to small asset industries such as coffee shops and book bars. This is certainly a development direction, but on this basis there should be other ways of playing, which we will discuss in depth later.

Advantages of traditional Internet cafe industry

The traditional Internet cafe industry has been blinded by the idea of ​​making money without doing anything. Some potential advantages have been completely ignored. As an industry that is closest to the Internet in the past and now, there is no trace of the Internet in the overall development process. Even the message board of the Internet cafe is just a decoration. This is an incredible reality. Here, Eric will take stock of the advantages of the Internet cafe industry that have been ignored.

1. Natural network entrance. In the first ten years of the development of the Internet, the traditional Internet cafe industry almost existed as the entrance to the entire Internet. Major game companies formed a large number of ground promotion teams to post posters all over the country and paste their own posters in every corner of the Internet cafes. However, as the controller of the entrance, Internet cafe practitioners did not even have an official WeChat account.

2. High staff turnover. Traditional Internet cafes were able to become the largest entrance to the Internet at the beginning because of the huge customer flow, and these customers are all heavy Internet users. They spend a lot of time every day searching for their favorite music, novels, games, movies and TV series on the Internet.

3. High customer trust. The customer experience of Internet cafes is generally poor, and the environment, sanitation and machine configurations are not very good, but on the contrary, the customer trust is very high. If the Internet cafe is compared to an APP, it is definitely a high-frequency APP application. Although the customer experience is very poor, it does not prevent users from using it again and again. All this is due to the fact that practitioners and Internet users can get along well. Internet cafes are equivalent to a heavy community. Although it has many shortcomings, there is a high centripetal force within the community.

4. Heavy Internet users. The attributes and positioning of Internet cafes determine that their users are all heavy Internet users, which has great development potential. By making full use of user resources, there are many ways to expand business. However, in fact, traditional Internet cafe owners only see the one-hour Internet fee and ignore the larger market behind the users.

5. Diversified product demands. The owners of traditional Internet cafes almost all chose snacks and catering, but ignored another product demand with higher profits, that is, the demand for PCs and peripheral products. Almost everyone (of course there are exceptions) started to use the Internet in Internet cafes, and then they wanted to buy their own computers. People who have computers also have a demand for peripheral products. Faced with such a large group of potential business groups, Internet cafe owners are collectively blind, which is really incredible.

6. Superior bargaining power. An Internet cafe may have dozens of computers, or as many as two or three hundred or even more. In addition, peripheral products such as routers, mice and keyboards are frequently replaced, so traditional Internet cafes have strong bargaining power in PCs and peripheral products. In addition, Internet cafe users are highly potential customers, so they have more advantages than computer mall merchants in entering related industries by leveraging their own advantages.

The traditional Internet cafe industry is a supporting industry for the Internet and also an entry industry for the Internet. Internet cafes account for a large proportion of the entire Internet's entry traffic, especially in terms of PC games, music, novels, and film and television dramas. In terms of attributes, the Internet cafe industry should be one of the most important components of the Internet industry, but due to the lack of management, this huge supporting industry has been turned into a traditional industry, which is actually a very sad thing.

Exploration on the transformation of Internet cafes

1. Use your own advantages to establish a self-media matrix. As mentioned above, Internet cafes have strong Internet portal attributes, with high customer traffic and user loyalty. You can use your own advantages to establish a self-media matrix centered on Weibo and WeChat , use in-store activities and your own resources to quickly attract user attention, and turn past floating customers into long-term users.

2. Use bargaining power to create an e-commerce portal. Since Internet cafes have strong bargaining power for PCs and peripheral products, and most of the upstream channels for PCs also sell mobile phones, Internet cafes have very strong bargaining power for PCs, mobile phones and peripheral products. They can use their own portal advantages to establish e-commerce and community micro-business stores, and further open up the national B2C market based on their own O2O market, breaking the dilemma of single products and profit models in the past.

3. Create a free WIFI network to increase the entry attribute. On the basis of the existing PC network, a separate free WIFI network is established to provide Internet access for non-PC users, which can increase the popularity of Internet cafes and attract traffic to WeChat public accounts. Due to the difference in user experience between mobile phone and PC Internet access, free WIFI will not only not cause the loss of PC Internet users, but will also increase the attendance rate. It can also increase customer flow during peak hours and stimulate consumption of peripheral products and e-commerce platforms.

4. Take advantage of the small industry circle and establish an industry media alliance. The Internet cafe industry circle in the same city is generally very small, and the bosses of each cafe know each other through the Internet. Therefore, Internet cafe owners in the same city can sit down and chat together, and use their respective advantages to establish an industry alliance, integrate their own Internet cafe resources and self-media platform resources, and further enhance the Internet cafe's Internet entrance advantage in the same city. Break the status quo of operating independently in the past, increase their own market negotiation advantages, and cooperate with local O2O merchants. At the same time, they can also expand online business and cooperate with online store owners to divert traffic to online stores.

Internet cafe + O2O future entrance

Internet cafes, as a supporting industry for the Internet portal, have become a marginal industry during the rapid development of the Internet. This is partly due to the lack of management and partly due to the excessive dispersion of power. Over the past twenty years, each industry has been operating independently, making it difficult to establish a presence.

In the future, if Internet cafes want to return to the embrace of Internet cafes, in addition to actively reforming and innovating, building a self-media matrix and taking the path of community e-commerce, they should also actively carry out cooperation with peers. Only in this way can they fly further with the O2O trend and play an important role in the development of the O2O market.

Through the construction of self-media, social networking and portal, Internet cafes should take advantage of the resource advantages of cooperation with peers, build themselves into a strong portal of the Internet, establish a strategic future centered on "Internet cafe +", and return themselves to the center of the Internet.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.