▲ While laying out the sinking market, foreign convenience stores such as Lawson paid more attention to online channel expansion, and followed local retail stores to introduce new models such as instant retail. Photo source: Zhongbai Lawson’s official account
instant delivery expands the service radius of convenience stores from 500-1000 meters to about 5 kilometers. Especially at night, it can maximize the advantages of all-weather business and expand the customer acquisition funnel.
In the increasingly competitive convenience store industry, foreign brands and local brands are wrestling with real-time retail and sinking markets.
According to reports, due to the narrowing of the differentiation of fresh food and the differentiation of fresh food channels, Wuhan Zhongbai Luosen made an internal judgment: the comprehensive competitiveness of fresh food is declining. Zhou Bin, general manager of Zhongbai Lawson, said that the era of "one trick to eat all over the sky" has passed, and convenience store operators should seize online sales and sink the market to build new barriers to competition.
In recent years, foreign convenience stores such as Lawson and 7-Eleven have accelerated the pace of sinking, and have enhanced their competitiveness in the local sinking market by adding real-time retail and creating differentiated products with local characteristics. Industry analysts point out that in recent years, consumer shopping habits have changed dramatically, with immediate demand soaring. In the sinking market with distinctive localization characteristics, compared with local brand convenience stores and mom-and-pop stores, foreign convenience stores are still in a state of following the application of the new model, and they need to be more flexible to deal with the new environment and market changes.
Foreign brand convenience stores are rushing to the sinking market
Zhongbai Lawson is a 24-hour convenience store operated by Wuhan Zhongbai Convenience Store Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Zhongbai Group, which has reached a strategic agreement with LAWSON, a world-renowned convenience store brand. As of July 15, 2022, Zhongbai Lawson has opened more than 700 stores in the Lianghu area. In addition to Wuhan and Changsha, it also covers Jingmen, Huangshi, Jingzhou, Xianning, Xiaogan, and Yichang. , Xiangyang , Ezhou , Xiantao , Tianmen , Qianjiang and other markets.
Zhongbai Luosen general manager Zhou Bin judged that in the post-epidemic era, convenience store operators should pay attention to three aspects: first, seize the online sales boom and do a good job in online sales of convenience stores; second, pay attention to sinking the market, With the improvement of urbanization in China, the convenience store market is no longer limited to the primary market; third, with the normalization of epidemic prevention and control, community-based convenience stores will become a new breakthrough.
In recent years, well-known foreign chain convenience store brands that used to focus on first- and second-tier cities have sunk, and the consumption potential of lower-tier cities is becoming a new growth driver.
public information shows that 7-Eleven convenience store has expanded its stores to Jiangsu, Shaanxi, Hubei, Henan, Hunan, Fujian, etc. Lawson is also speeding up the pace. Zhang Sheng, vice president of Lawson China, once said that during the epidemic, the sales of Rosen stores in East China achieved a month-on-month growth of 30%, of which the growth rate in third- and fourth-tier cities was much greater than that in first- and second-tier cities. Taking Zhangjiagang, a county-level city under the jurisdiction of Suzhou and as an example, the sales volume of the convenience store in the Lawson community increased by nearly 80% year-on-year, while the growth rate of the Shanghai store was only 10%-20% year-on-year.
▲ On October 1, Zhongbai Lawson's first batch of "mobile stores" opened. Source: Zhongbai Lawson’s official account
overweights the new instant retail model
while grabbing the beach and sinking in the market, foreign convenience stores also pay more attention to the expansion of online channels, and follow local retail stores to introduce new models such as instant retail to serve new users.
Previously,Yan Qian, the new chairman of 7-Eleven China, said that in the future, it will focus on its instant retail strategy such as takeaway. The relevant person in charge of Lawson China also said that takeout has brought a lot of growth to physical stores, and this part of the sales accounts for about 10% of the overall. In Sichuan-Chongqing and other regions, online sales account for about 15% due to the strong promotion of , Meituan, and convenience stores on weekends.
In August this year, Zhongbai Lawson released relevant data on the "convenience store +" model, showing that the average daily sales increased by more than 17% year-on-year, and online sales increased by more than 21% month-on-month.
"In the context of the huge increase in consumers' immediate demand, it is an inevitable choice for foreign convenience stores to start paying attention to instant retailing. In the application of the new model, local brand convenience stores such as Meiyijia have already demonstrated." an industry insider pointed out.
In the previous retail reform, chain brands such as Europe, America, Japan and South Korea dominated, but in the new round of reform of instant retail, the local chain brands that responded quickly have become the biggest winners at this stage. According to
's public information, in 2021, Meituan and Ele.me and wait for the home platform, and the local convenience store Meiyijia will have the largest instant retail sales, reaching 1.485 billion yuan, overwhelming foreign convenience stores. In the past few years, Meiyijia has completed the accumulation of the number of Meituan online stores. The number of online stores has increased from less than 1,000 in 2017 to nearly 20,000 in 2022, covering nearly 200 cities. As of April 2022, the monthly sales have exceeded 200 million, and the peak monthly orders have exceeded 3.9 million, showing a rapid development momentum.
Industry analysts pointed out that instant delivery has expanded the service radius of convenience stores from 500-1000 meters to about 5 kilometers. Especially at night, it can maximize the advantages of all-weather business and expand the customer acquisition funnel. Expanding instant retail online channels has become the core force for major chain convenience stores to break the bottleneck of growth and build users' minds. Edited by
丨Liu Dingwen Hu Xinyue
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