电商开始不行了？

电商开始不行了？

中国电商集团老大阿里巴巴斥资20亿元人民币入股折扣连锁超市的股份，或许纯电子商务已经触及增长极限。

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

grocery食品杂货店['grəʊs(ə)rɪ]

bricks-and-mortar传统的实体企业

mortar用灰泥涂抹，用灰泥结合['mɔːtə]

bricks砖块[brɪk]

appliances电气用具[əp'laɪənsɪz]

affiliate隶属的机构[ə'fɪlɪeɪt]

hybrid混血儿；混合物['haɪbrɪd]

envisage正视，面对[ɪn'vɪzɪdʒ]

Alibaba buys stake in discount grocery store chain（ 406 words）

By Charles Clover in Beijing

Alibaba has bought a stake in a discount grocery store chain,as China’s biggest ecommerce group broadens its focus from online to offline retail as part of its expansion strategy.

In a sign of how Alibaba’s approach to ecommerce has changed,the Hangzhou-based company said the main reason it bought a 32 per cent stake in Sanjiang Shopping Club was its“extensive offline network and experience running retail stores”.

Alibaba on Monday said it had agreed to pay Rmb2bn（$290m) for the stake in Sanjiang,which is based in Zhejiang province where it operates 160 discount grocery stores. Sanjiang said it had more than 1m members.

Since the summer of 2015,Alibaba has made a number of investments in bricks-and-mortar retail as growth in ecommerce — where browsing and shopping take place entirely online — begins to slow.

In August 2015,Alibaba bought a 20 per cent share of electronic retailer Suning for $4.6bn. Suning has 1,600 outlets in 298 cities across China selling appliances,books and baby products.

Alibaba and its payment affiliate,Ant Financial,also last year announced they would each invest Rmb3bn to develop a food delivery service called Koubei.

Experts see this as evidence of a new hybrid commerce model emerging that combines physical stores with mobile internet,known as“online to offline”or“combined channel”commerce. Its rise reflects an emerging consensus in the industry that pure ecommerce will not completely displace bricks-and-mortar stores to the extent once envisaged.

Iresearch,a Beijing-based consultancy,predicts that pure ecommerce has started to hit the era of declining growth. From 70 per cent growth registered in 2011,it predicts that from 2018 growth will be at 16 per cent annually.

Cao Lei,director at China e-Business Research Center,said that 80 per cent of China’s sales were still made offline and the trend of ecommerce companies buying physical stores was now“very firm and likely to continue”.

Other companies that have placed bets on pure ecommerce have also begun to invest increasingly in physical stores,in a recognition that pure ecommerce may have hit its limits of growth.

These include Xiaomi — which used to be the top selling smartphone in China and relies on ecommerce sales but has seen its lead eaten away by competitors such as Oppo and Vivo that have more offline distribution.

“The [smartphone] market has shifted away from online to offline channels,”said Bryan Ma of tech consultancy IDC in Singapore.