Gentz, a 34-year-old German who is a co-founder of Zalando—a European clone of Zappos, the online US shoes and fashion retailer

admin2022-01-20  45

问题     Gentz, a 34-year-old German who is a co-founder of Zalando—a European clone of Zappos, the online US shoes and fashion retailer owned by Amazon. He wanted to expand his company into the world’ s largest digital market. But after the meetings with Chinese, Gentz decided China’ s approach to online fashion was far ahead of anything available elsewhere. He marveled at how Chinese consumers freely chatted with—and bought from—brands and stylists on WeChat, a local Internet messenger, while online retailers, independent delivery companies and fashion houses routinely joined forces. "We wanted to take that experience back to Europe," Gentz said.
    Zalando’ s approach of borrowing from its Chinese counterparts represents a new strategy of looking East, not West, for inspiration. In overhauling its successful European online fashion store into a digital platform, Zalando differs from others trying to match Amazon and its logistics and technological prowess. The German company previously focused on handling all sales and inventory by itself. But in addition to selling directly to consumers, it now wants to remake itself into a digital shopping mall, allowing fashion houses and retailers to make sales as well, often with limited input from Zalando. These efforts are made in roughly a year.
    Zalando’s inspiration from China, though, comes with challenges. Despite domestic dominance, Chinese players like Alibaba have yet to successfully replicate their business model overseas. Alibaba just has hired local country managers and brought its payment service to Europe, mostly to serve Chinese visitors. Online shopping habits in Europe also are somewhat different from those in China. And Amazon and European competitors, including ASOS and Yoox Net-a-Porter, may yet outmuscle Zalando with their traditional takes on e-commerce.
    To compete with Amazon and others, Zalando has spent heavily on a network of logistics hubs that dot the European landscape. For Nicolas Borg, a Zalando strategy executive who previously worked at eBay, the next stage will most likely be chatbots, or humanlike interactions powered by artificial intelligence, to offer fashion advice to consumers on the likes of Facebook Messenger. "In the future, what will matter is not where the purchase happens, but how you can influence it, " Borg said. "That is our biggest challenge, " he added. "How do we change the online experience?"
According to Paragraph 2, what efforts have been made by Zalando in roughly a year?

选项 A、Expanding retailers.
B、Focusing on handling sales.
C、Concentrating on inventory.
D、Making a digital mode.

答案D

解析 细节题。根据题干关键词定位到文章第二段最后一句These efforts are made in roughly a year,该句前面内容为Zalando公司所做的具体努力,A项“零售商的扩张”在文中并未提及。根据第二段倒数第三句The German company previously focused on handling all sales and inventory by itself及其关键词previously(先前地)可知,B、C两项为公司以前注重的业务,均与题意不符。D项a digital mode是原文a digital platform的同义替换。故本题选D。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/lni4777K
0

最新回复(0)