With the closure of its Beijing Zhongguancun Plaza store, Carrefour's traditional hypermarkets have been reduced to nearly 200 stores in China. In the past four years, Carrefour closed more than 80 stores, plus new stores, the total number of stores decreased by nearly 60. 2021 October, Carrefour has publicly said that it will upgrade half of the domestic hypermarkets to member stores. Now half a year has passed, the traditional hypermarkets continue to close stores, upgrade member store program is slow. Industry analysts believe that Carrefour should solve the problem of its own business model, and then further consider the layout of the hypermarkets, membership stores and other forms of business balance.

Traditional hypermarkets closed one after another

And in 2021, Carrefour closed more than 20 stores, the second half of the closure of hypermarkets 7, 8 convenience stores, 3 select stores, involving Chengdu, Zhuhai, Jinan, Hangzhou, Nanchang and other cities. Among them, Carrefour Jinan Weijiazhuang store was closed on August 5, which was the last store of Carrefour in Jinan. Carrefour Chengdu Babao Street store closed on September 30th, which was Carrefour's first store in Chengdu market and operated for 22 years.

Carrefour closed 20 stores in 2018, 17 in 2019, 20 in 2020, 20 in 2021, and 4 as of now in 2022, amounting to more than 80 stores, according to a related report by Finance World.

Hejun Consulting partner and head of chain management Wen Zhihong believes that Carrefour hypermarkets closing stores one after another is not a problem faced by individual superstores, but rather the entire domestic hypermarket industry is facing a ****ual problem. The fundamental reason is that the retail format of hypermarkets emphasize low prices, one-stop shopping and other core values, with the rise of e-commerce, hypermarkets of the above core values of the advantage is no longer obvious, so the operation is facing difficulties.

Slow progress in upgrading member stores

After realizing the decline of hypermarkets, Carrefour chose to get out of the business difficulties by transforming its member stores. on October 15, 2021, Carrefour's CEO, Mr. Tian Rui, said that Carrefour was planning to upgrade 100 out of the 200 hypermarkets in the coming three years to paid member stores. membership stores. The target user group is the quality of life users in 4 municipalities and 15 cities above sub-provincial level, which will break the current status quo of driving dozens of kilometers and queuing up in the membership stores. Tian Rui has said that in Shanghai, for example, three years later, consumers will drive 15 minutes to a Carrefour membership store.

In addition, on the first day of the opening of Carrefour's first member store, a variety of products were out of stock, and Carrefour responded by saying that the suppliers were pressured by competitors, resulting in some of the suppliers buying back the empty goods, making it impossible for many members of consumers to buy.

Wen Zhihong analyzed that the reasons for the poor progress of Carrefour's member stores, in addition to the impact of the epidemic, Carrefour's own operation also has problems. Member of the transformation of the store involves a variety of construction and adjustment, Carrefour's parent company Suning is also facing a difficult operating situation, at this time it is more difficult to invest more resources, energy to build a member of the store.

Small and beautiful fresh food store or a breakthrough

The industry believes that the membership store is not the only direction of the traditional hypermarkets. China Federation of Commerce expert committee member, Beijing International Trade Center research base chief expert Lai Yang said that although the current membership store business is hot, but for new entrants to the membership store players, from the cost-benefit point of view, profitability will be a difficult hurdle, "new entrants to the business can not make the characteristics of the membership store business, and build a good chilled fresh supply chain system, is also a challenge."

Wen Zhihong also believes that Carrefour in the acquisition by Suning, Suning on the hypermarket has also done some successful transformation work, including online and offline all-channel through the integration of some of the home appliances implanted in the hypermarket. In addition, the cross-industry combination with food and beverage has also brought some customer traffic. Carrefour should summarize the various attempts and explorations made, and then further consider the balanced layout of hypermarkets, membership stores and other formats. "For Carrefour, the membership store business is only a conception, and hypermarket business has aged, in the two business are not mature, stable situation, it is difficult to consider Carrefour in the balance between the two business and the layout of the problem, Carrefour should first solve the problem of their own business model."

Lai Yang pointed out that Carrefour's biggest problem now lies in its own weak fresh food management ability, "Packaged food, consumer goods and other aspects of Carrefour's traditional hypermarkets, and pricing has a competitive advantage. But now consumers are increasingly inclined to fresh food-oriented stores, the weakness of its fresh food business is gradually exposed. Carrefour can focus on considering the layout of a small area of fresh food stores."

Edited by Wang Lin Proofread by Liu Baoqing