In recent years, with the rapid development of China's economy and changes in consumer demand, convenience stores have developed rapidly in China, the number of stores of the top 100 convenience store chains has been nearly 132,000, and there are many excellent local brand convenience stores. However, at the same time, the industry generally exists in the lack of commodity power, low degree of online, low level of store management and personnel inefficiency and other issues. Domestic convenience stores are in urgent need of rapid improvement in digital capabilities.
KPMG and the China Chain Store Management Association jointly released the "2021 China Convenience Store Development Report", pointed out that in the policy support convenience stores will be ushered in the transformation of five directions, namely: upgrading the structure of the chain, personalization of their own brand, and attracting traffic. Attracting traffic, Creating a digital closed loop, Expanding the service radius of convenience stores, and Integrating the supply chain and improving the logistics management system. Meanwhile, convenience shopping, scenario-based experience, category upgrades and digitalization will be the four core trends for convenience store companies.
Let's take a look at Rosen, Family, and Good Neighbors as representatives of the digital innovation model of convenience stores.
Rosen: Digitalization for high growth
In recent years, Japanese convenience stores have reversed their previous cautious layout and opened a "wild goose chase mode".
If you look at the size of the step, Rosen has taken the biggest step, and now with a scale of 3,256 stores to overtake the whole family, becoming the largest foreign convenience store in China. 2021, Rosen will still maintain a growth rate of 30% -40%, plans to open 1,100 new stores, the total number of stores is expected to reach 4,300.
01 digital tools to analyze customer demand
Rosen entered China after the high-speed expansion, In addition to Rosen for the domestic situation to carry out a variety of franchise models, is a set of their own system standards. Fan Guangdong, director of Rosen Systems in China, mentioned the secret in a speech: "The first is the merchandise strategy, we have our own product development team; second is the membership system, from the online data, the customer to carry out targeted analysis; and finally, and most importantly: the output of the standardization of business processes. Rosen has a set of standard management business standards that can be brought to all franchise systems."
So how did Rosen develop this set of business process standardization? It comes from Rosen's years of data analysis and summarization of store customers. In short, it is what the customer wants, the store to provide what, like private label, Rosen will produce their own.
Rosen found that more and more "small business district manufacturing retail industry" is gradually formed, that is, from the procurement of raw materials, the production of goods, store sales and service, a one-stop store to provide consumers. Consumers are satisfied, naturally, will again patronize the store, over time, scattered traffic into a fixed flow of customers.
These data come from the powerful digital system behind Rosen, the collection of basic data and the ability to analyze it efficiently. During the epidemic, many consumers could not get to the stores, at the same time, Rosen began to establish WeChat community, from drag-and-drop recommendation, to independent sweeping into the group of consumers, the survival rate of more than 80% or more. In this process, stores will continue to publish some new products, promotions, and interaction with users inside this group. In addition to this there are solitaire activities, you can better grasp the goods needed to prepare inventory.
02 Merchandise and Operations
Rosen's differentiated competitiveness in merchandise lies in its fresh food and desserts, with fresh food accounting for more than 40% of sales. Rosen will change 12% to 15% of its merchandise each month and 130 to 150% of its merchandise in a year, depending on the popularity of the merchandise and other factors.
The reason for the constant and rapid updating lies in the fresh food factory behind Rosen. Rosen's own products in the fresh food factory mainly contain cakes, sandwiches, rice balls and other convenience store-specific low-temperature fresh food category.
Rosen's store operation ability, in its understanding of young people has been presented. Rosen wants to catch the consumer crowd, for young people aged 12-19 years old, in this age group accustomed to using the shopping channel, will accompany its life.
In response to the youthful clientele, Rosen first made changes in the taste of goods. In addition to its signature category desserts, there are iced moon cakes and other youthful flavors, and the rest of the cakes, rice balls, pastry, and Korean food are also developed for the 00s.
The same goes for its co-branded anime stores. Teddy theme store, HALLO KITTY theme store, LOVE LIVE! theme store, Nautical King theme store, all of these Rosen's co-branded IPs are familiar to teenagers. After 25 years in China, Rosen still presents a youthful demeanor. This is reflected in its insight into the preferences of young people, but also from its flexible and adaptable business philosophy.
03 Digitalization opens a new exploration of intelligent stores
Convenience stores have been upgraded from traditional stores to digital and intelligent stores! From a single visit to the store to consume, transformed into online + offline digital shopping mode, which can not be separated from the entire digital system.
Zhongbai Rosen has taken into account both technology and fashion, and launched the first intelligent digital convenience store - Yongqing City Store, which has set up another benchmark store for the industry.
This convenience store with many technological innovations to play, digital electronic equipment can be seen everywhere: electronic price tags, electronic screens, self-service cash registers, etc., as well as the new on-line Internet of Things control, air-conditioning temperature control, freezer failure warning of the three systems.
The Internet of Things control system unifies the control of all circuitry equipment such as signage lights and ambient lighting in the store. Signboard lights, ambient lighting will be automatically opened and adjusted with the weather conditions, creating a comfortable shopping environment for customers; at the same time, the circuit control system can also be real-time store power consumption and energy consumption analysis and fault reporting and repair.
The air-conditioning temperature control system not only meets the indoor temperature and humidity of the constant temperature adjustment, but also timely cooling for the air-conditioning unit, so as to achieve cost savings and reduce consumption. Refrigerator failure warning system can be realized in the store air curtain cabinets and other all freezers, refrigerators failure analysis and warning. Once a failure occurs, the failure analysis data will be directly transmitted to the background, greatly enhancing the maintenance time, to ensure the normal operation of the store at the same time, for food safety escort.
The store also uses electronic price tags, fresh food area using electronic price tags, according to the store demand at any time on the fresh food price adjustments, changing the past paper to play the price tag of the cumbersome, and further enhance the management efficiency.
The essence of retail is to serve customers and create the best consumer experience for users. And information technology can manage the store and make the store have temperature.
At the 14th China Business Information Technology Industry Conference, He Yunmin, Deputy General Manager of Rosen, focused on sharing Rosen's Three Precision Convenience Stores: Refined Management, Precise Marketing, and Exquisite Products . First, the practice of product refinement : from the commodity level, to give consumers a reason to come to Rosen, give consumers a reason to come back to Rosen, give consumers a reason to come to Rosen often. Reflecting the differentiated commodity power; mastering the key Know-how for the whole value chain management; KA-oriented supplier management with category management as the core.
Secondly, the practice of management refinement : 1, 2019 Rosen system-wide to achieve system transformation: from the Japanese-style selling price reduction method of management to the closed-loop cost management of single product unit price suitable for changes in the Internet of Things era; 2, to strengthen the management refinement of the temperature mismatch competition strategy, to achieve the time mismatch with the takeaway platform in the time mismatch competition strategy The complementary, refrigerated series of cross-store pre-sale.
Third, Rosen's practice of marketing precision , marketing precision is not limited to itself, through the value-added Rosen platform, the operation of the 15 million member system, in cooperation with the supplier, to do a good job of the supplier's new products and the object of the role of the bridge between the consumer at the same time to the supplier to provide the comparison of the new products, dynamic sales information.
Data-driven empowered digital marketing, based on consumer demand to store POS as the basis of the business of new retail technology in the convenience store landing operations; Rosen closed-loop value, play the value of the offline scene, cultivate reverse integration capabilities; deep plowing member data mining, O2O takeout, O2O attraction, E-PAY,, SNS publicity, community promotion and so on.
Whole Family: One Center, Four Closed Loops Digital Strategy
By polishing the single-store model, and making the region more permeable as the main strategy, Whole Family is first to run a horse race to increase market share in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai, and then expand to the whole country. In terms of store opening strategy, the region to build its own supply chain and logistics system before opening stores, and then the supply chain can be distributed within the scope of a large number of franchisees invited to open stores, so as to achieve the purpose of reducing costs and improving efficiency.
In order to cope with the increasingly fierce market competition, the whole family has also embarked on the road of digital transformation, which combines the membership system and big data analysis to accurately locate the 90s customers, and achieve rapid expansion.
So, how to do digital transformation? The whole family puts forward "one center and four closed loops".
01 A center
A center is a customer-centric value proposition. What can you do to help customers, why do customers look for you and not others, so it is important to understand when analyzing the needs, what do customers really want?
In the morning, before going to work to buy a breakfast, and then rushed upstairs, which belongs to the personal temporary consumption. So how do you expand the scenario for it? The opposite of individual is family, and the opposite of temporary demand is planned, so Whole Family should launch a family consumption-based program. Whole Family now has more than 60 million members, and members can get cheaper prices with their points. Consumers can feel that the price of the whole family is very advantageous.
02 Four closed loops
Whole family first set up an online mall. The whole family is not to do e-commerce, the whole family is still offline stores, the first step should be to do a good job and consolidate the offline. And because the whole family has membership points, to let the points live, so that it has more consumption scenes, so the establishment of the online mall.
The operation of the online mall utilizes two means:
The first is to import orders from offline through in-store code scanning. The whole family's online mall to the third year, the turnover reached 2 billion, did not spend a dime on advertising, orders are all from offline;
Second, through the store pick-up to achieve re-purchase, 50% of the people will be picked up in the store.
Some people say, I'm a Whole Family member, but I don't seem to make purchases online. That's right, because only 20% of paid members can buy, and paid members need to pay $100 a year in dues, which is a membership model similar to COSCO's, and this membership model alone has helped Whole Family make $1.2 billion a year without any costs.
Behind the paid membership, in fact, there is a lot of data support. The whole family is constantly scanning for customer profiles after collecting tons of data in the background.
For example, the whole family's system scans the data once a week, and a certain customer comes 10 times a month, and the data shows that he hasn't come in a week, and by the time he hasn't come in the second week, the system sends a text message to him to tell him that the whole family boxed lunch is 25% off. Why boxed lunch? Because the data shows that the last time he came to the store to buy a boxed lunch, then if he came to the store to buy a boxed lunch after receiving the text message, he would automatically get 25% off. At the same time, the cashier will ask him if he brought coffee today, because his tag in the system shows that he is a coffee man. As soon as the data advances that there is a 67% probability that he will buy this item, the whole family will recommend it to him.
The whole family's ecosystem is to allow other different businesses like restaurants to use the whole family's points, in order to just make the points live, so that the customers of these businesses can be active, and then let their customers come back. So of the 60 million members of the family, 30 million of them are members from the outside after cooperation with various businesses.
Specifically, we are seeking to maximize the added value of our customers through the development and production of marketable products, while streamlining the flow of goods and making it more efficient through the sharing of information*** with manufacturers and wholesalers.
According to Kensuke Hosomi, the new president of Family Convenience Stores, Japan, he stated to the public that he is "committed to reducing costs through the use of digital technology" and is accelerating the digitization of stores as a top priority. The whole family has a whole set of digital system support, including general membership system, fee membership system, product management digital system, the whole family butler system and so on. These digital tools also help the family to analyze customer demand and store traffic types, bringing rapid expansion beyond performance improvement.
Good Neighbors, a regionalized convenience store company with more than 300 stores in Beijing, has been committed to using digital tools to drive improvements in store operational capabilities. On the digital understanding, an e-commerce site recommended as an example, citing each user behavior, browsing habits will be digitally captured, analyzed and formed into a strategy to consumer preferences in the way recommended, reach and present. The offline scene, in fact, the same can be digitally defined, in addition to the traditional order data, user data, and even through the IOT device, the user in and out of the field, online and offline behavioral data can be effectively analyzed, and into the merchandise display, marketing and other strategies.
Good Neighbors: running on the road of digital operation
In Good Neighbors' digital operation, the information and operations, purchasing, and warehousing teams collaborate to digitize each link, and the personnel for the digitization of the link needs. The organization's structure is adjusted and the key data of the operation is assessed.
In view of the reality of the retail industry's operating capacity and the optimal cost structure considerations, the good neighbors think that at this stage to "intelligent decision-making and intelligent assistance" for the feasibility of the landing goal, complete "automation" in the implementation of the process is not entirely economical. The process of automation is not entirely economical. Particularly in the case of small and medium-sized businesses, where talent is scarce and the cost of high-end algorithmic talent is high, complete digital computing is more difficult for each process. And part of the digital computing results reference sent to the store, combined with the store operating experience, will be a more pragmatic approach. In fact, this is also the corporate culture, and good neighbors have a lot to do with their own development.
And in the process of digitization, the reasonable matching of people and goods (store store type scene), goods and the field of the high degree of cooperation (a good location to put high-quality goods) is the breakthrough point in the construction of digital operation.
For the "people", the good neighbors have recently been working closely with the Jingdong Retail Cloud store digital team to analyze, according to the user lifecycle model, the user stratification, and efforts to guide the user through the means of user operations, the number of times the user came to the store to buy. . Through the creation of scenes and the satisfaction of goods to enhance the depth of associated purchases. At the same time, through the user, commodity label matching, the need for goods to the corresponding store type stores, read and meet user needs. For the "goods", good neighbors in the selection process of single SKU evaluation of the whole network, in the ordering process, through the past sales, inventory, loss and other data, as well as the weather and holidays and other factors, to give stores ordering data recommendations, combined with the person in charge of stores to make reasonable ordering preparation. The operation idea is to make reasonable ordering preparations. Through the layered operation of commodities, we manage the turnover efficiency, inventory depth, management of expensive products, and category fulfillment of commodities separately, and make reasonable planning for the lifespan of fresh commodities, and control the loss through the methods of notification of price-changing members. Processed food to do with the upstream factory linkage production plan. For the "field", the store digitization team in the site selection and management of the field to carry out in-depth cooperation. In terms of site selection, through the application of spatial big data, coupled with the behavioral characteristics of convenience store customers, in the area where the store is to be opened, the characteristics of the crowd, the city data for digital display and reference to the store developers with a sharp tool. In the management of the store field , for the user line, hot zone for reasonable planning, and for the cargo area of the ping efficiency, shelves and commodities reasonably matched with the efficiency of the turnover of the reasonable planning and evaluation. For the implementation of the efficiency of continuous revision, the good position and focus on planning the goods to do a reasonable match. In the daily management of store affairs, good neighbors self-research of the "store system", so as to guide & supervision of stores, the implementation of standardization of landing and analysis of operational data to form a guide to action (digital operation). Through the combination of the store system and the store's daily work of ordering, receiving, inventory, loss reporting and cashiering, especially in the process of implementation of some of the implementation of the action of the digital strategy to guide, and further enhance the implementation of the efficiency of the store to reduce the difficulty of the thinking of the store staff. Good Neighbor believes that digital operation is not only a set of information technology system, but also a set of digital operation methodology based on: task - > execution - > statistics - > analysis - > early warning - > strategy - > "automation "Intelligent Decision Making and Intelligent Assistance. And management in the operation of thinking from the original empiricism to data strategism of the determination to change, not only the need for information technology system changes, but also the need for organizational structure and store processes and assessment of correspondence and support. The progress of the digital operation system will also be a set of static operation standardization to dynamic standardization, stimulate the enterprise in each operation small link efficiency continuously improve. Conclusion In the aftermath of the epidemic, the major brands of supermarkets are gradually turning to miniaturization around the community. At the same time, Meituan, Ali, Pinduoduo, drip and other Internet giants have joined the community group purchasing flocked to the community. And as a community service convenience stores, whether the survival space will suffer a further squeeze? In this regard, professionals believe that the core demand for convenience stores still lies in the word convenience. Supermarket miniaturization and electric community group purchasing for convenience stores have a certain impact, but not particularly large, because the positioning of the respective business is not the same, the function is not the same. Supermarket miniaturization and community group buying in the convenience value is different compared to convenience stores. In the next 3-5 years, sustainable development driven by the improvement of operational capacity is an important development direction for the future focus of the convenience store business. Store operations are the core of the business to support future development, companies need to focus on store expansion, product iteration and digital capabilities to improve the overall store operations.