On February 15, Zhenhua Supermarket in Qingdao CBD Wanda Plaza officially closed its store, which was the same as the previous closure of Jiashike and Aurunte in the same location, and the reason for the closure of Zhenhua Supermarket was also an operating loss and could not make ends meet. Although the CBD Wanda store is closed, Zhenhua Supermarket is still operating normally in other stores in Qingdao, which also shows that Zhenhua Group has not given up the Qingdao market.
"Online consumption is an important reason for the decrease in consumer traffic, in addition, the product positioning and operation strategy of supermarkets are also important conditions for supermarket operations." According to the staff of the supermarket, in the past four years, the operation of the supermarket has not been ideal, and the next step is that the company will make strategic adjustments and lay out new stores in other areas of Qingdao.
Qilu Business Review No. 54
Written by Zhu Yaqing
Reviewer/Cheng Ruolan
Product positioning of Zhenhua Supermarket
Speaking of "Zhenhua", Yantai people are particularly familiar with it. Yantai Zhenhua Department Store Group Co., Ltd. is a joint-stock enterprise approved by the Shandong Provincial Government in 1994. In the 1990s, Zhenhua Commercial Building, located on Haigang Road in Zhifu District, was only a traditional department store with an operating area of more than 9,000 square meters and sales of less than 100 million yuan, and it was also the only store of Zhenhua Group, with total assets of only 50 million yuan.
Image source: Photo.com
Zhenhua Supermarket is a supermarket brand of Yantai Zhenhua Group, and in 2018, Zhenhua Supermarket entered Qingdao CBD Wanda Plaza. In the same year, The Zhenhua Supermarket in Qingdao Oriental Film Capital Sunac Maoli opened.
All along, Zhenhua Supermarket has been aiming at "authenticity and convenience for the people", highlighting the atmosphere of fashion and refinement and quality of life. Taking Zhenhua Supermarket in Qingdao's West Coast New Area as an example, there is a diversified commodity area with a proportion of up to 70-80% of imported goods in the supermarket, and you can buy quality goods from many countries and more than 100 well-known brands.
In addition, because the supermarket is also equipped with its own vegetable base, fresh distribution center, cooked food processing center and logistics center, it can not only ensure the freshness of goods, but also be relatively affordable.
However, as the competition in Qingdao's retail market becomes increasingly fierce, the competition of qingdao's local retail brands such as Liqun, Wiki and Likelai is very fierce, and the foreign retail giants led by Carrefour and Jiashike are also "looking at the tiger". At the same time, the traditional retail industry is encountering the dual changes of consumer and market iteration and upgrading, and factors such as sluggish consumption environment, intensified competition, high rents, and e-commerce impact have affected the performance of physical retail.
According to the "2020 China Top 100 Chain Stores" selection, among the retail enterprises in Shandong, Jiajiayue Holding Group Co., Ltd. ranked highest, ranking 16th, with sales of 31.603 billion yuan in 2020, a growth rate of 9.2%. In 2020, the total number of stores was 924, with a store growth rate of 17%.
Shandong enterprises with sales of more than 10 billion yuan also include Ginza Group, Liqun Group Co., Ltd. and Yantai Zhenhua Commercial Group, which ranked 20th, 23rd and 27th respectively, with sales of 27.796 billion yuan, 27.126 billion yuan and 22.844 billion yuan in 2020, respectively, and the total number of stores of these four enterprises in 2020 was 381, 557 and 156 respectively. In the face of a sluggish market environment, traditional brand retailers will continue to seek transformation and change.
The impact of e-commerce on consumer traffic
In the past two years, the retail industry has suffered a period of heavy blows, and many large supermarkets have embarked on the road of acquisition and have withdrawn from the market; some supermarkets have transformed e-commerce and begun to live stream goods.
Especially after the outbreak of the epidemic, the four trillion-level tracks of e-commerce, payment, social networking and logistics have provided shopping convenience for consumers to fight the epidemic. At the same time, online consumption, digital payment and other methods are also changing people's shopping habits.
Taking the Qingdao CBD business district as an example, Zhenhua Supermarket is not the first supermarket in Wanda Plaza to close. Previously, the JIASHIKE and Aurint introduced by CBD Wanda Plaza have successively closed down. In addition to CBD Wanda, the G-super store on the B1 floor of Excellence Da Rong City has closed down less than two years after its opening. At present, the supermarkets that are still operating normally in the business district include Hema Fresh in Darong City and Liqun Supermarket in Nord Plaza.
In this regard, on the Internet, in the user evaluation of Zhenhua Supermarket by netizens, the lack of popularity has become the main aspect of netizens' complaints.
Some netizens said, "Although the supermarket is open in the prime location of Wanda CBD, there are not many customers and it is cold and clear. Some netizens said, "I often go shopping in the Wanda CBD, but I don't go to the supermarket much, in addition to shopping and eating, it is online shopping, so there are not many supermarket people, which is also reasonable." ”
In 2020, Zhenhua Supermarket and JD.com announced a cooperation to help Zhenhua Supermarket integrate online and offline. However, judging from the current situation of Zhenhua Supermarket in Wanda Plaza, the results are not ideal.
According to the relevant person in charge of Zhenhua, the strategic layout of Zhenhua Group in the future is still in Shandong Province, in addition to Qingdao, its large department store projects in Jinan, Weifang and other places are also in progress. Zhenhua will also expand nationwide and establish a Zhenhua chain operation network.
How does the traditional retail industry "go out of the circle"?
At present, the traditional retail industry is generally facing the situation of brand aging, which comes down to the failure to seize the newly emerging Generation Z users in the process of consumer iteration.
It can be seen that when the Qingdao Beer Cultural Creation set off a boom, when the May Fourth Square light show triggered tourists to queue up to watch, when the University Road Net Red Wall became a must-visit place for literary and artistic youth with a unique experience space, compared to these city business cards set off a wave of traffic climax, a number of brands of traditional retail enterprises did not take advantage of the momentum, and appeared together in the spotlight, quite a sense of decline by the times.
For Gen Z and post-00s, what are the highlights of offline physical retail? How does the traditional retail industry "go out of the circle"? These are all problems that need to be solved in the rebranding of traditional brick-and-mortar retail enterprises.
In this regard, industry insiders believe that for the marketing path, the most important thing is to change from pure commercialization to entertainment and topics. When the blind box is all over the circle of young people, when the second dimension is born again, when a new popular IP is born again, when a certain Internet celebrity becomes a popular potential energy, it is an element that can be used and grafted. The essence of marketing today is to find that circle, find that primer, do interesting things, and thus form a traffic effect.
Industry insiders also said that in the era of traditional media, the unity of television and one-sided media is doomed to spread the one-way preaching of the seller's market. However, in the digital age, innovation in the form of communication and the resonance of participation and emotion are more popular with consumers. The most important thing in communication is to seek common topics, dialogue and communication on an equal footing. For example, WeChat's message reply provides a two-way communication channel.
In short, the brand is fresh, close to the young people, maintain a cordial and interesting communication method, create their own circle layer, let the brand be active, and integrate into the lifestyle of emerging human beings, which is what the traditional retail industry needs to think about to achieve "out of the circle".
Welcome to forward and share
For business cooperation, please contact us by phone/WeChat: 0532-88707398/15275282167