#头条讲真的#
2023 is a cold winter for the supermarket industry, with nearly 700 supermarkets and convenience stores closed across the country in the first half of the year alone.
In the long list of store closures, there are Carrefour, Wal-Mart, Zhongbai Group, China Resources Vanguard, Yonghui Supermarket, etc.
Many people say that with the rapid development of e-commerce platforms, people are going to shop online, and offline stores are becoming more and more empty.
Some people also say that there is now a "wave of store closures", which means that there have been more openings before, and these supermarkets sell homogeneous products, and they really don't need so much.
However, there are two "foreign-funded supermarkets" that have bucked the trend and opened one in China, that is, Sam's and Costco.
In 2023, Sam's will open five new stores in China, with a total revenue of more than 80 billion yuan.
are all the same competitive environment, why are these two "foreign monks" better to chant the scriptures?
Costco, which is good at quality volumes
In August 2019, the country's first Costco opened in Shanghai, and the scene can be described as "red flags and crowds". Less than an hour after opening, popular items already need to be restocked.
Five years later, the same enthusiasm was staged again in Shenzhen, and if you want to enter the store, you need to queue for at least 3 hours, and the Moutai and Hermès handbags are snatched up in ten minutes.
Why are people so "crazy"? There is one reason - it is really cheap.
The Hermes leather bag sold for 180,000 yuan outside, the opening price of Costco was 146,000 yuan, and the Samsonite suitcase sold for 1,300 yuan outside, Costco sold it for 799 yuan.
The most powerful thing is that Costco not only sells ordinary goods cheaply, but also lowers the prices of international brands.
The basis for this is "less selection but finer", Costco's product units (SKUs) are about 4,000, while traditional supermarkets are about 20,000.
Because of the small number of product units, Costco has to ensure that each selection is "the best hit". They have the world's top procurement team, and they are constantly discovering products with explosive potential.
On the other hand, the scale of single product sales is the weight of negotiating prices with suppliers. In 2023, Costco's single SKU sales will reach $59.428 million, while Walmart will only have $2 million.
Finally, Costco's deep understanding of market trends may also be one of the reasons for its popularity.
On January 12 this year, the first store in South China opened in Shenzhen, and of the 130,000 membership cards processed that day, one-tenth came from Hong Kong compatriots.
Since the reopening of the border between Hong Kong and the mainland last year, spending in Shenzhen every weekend has become a must-have entertainment activity for many Hong Kong people. Costco chose to open a store in Shenzhen at this time, which should also take this trend into account.
Convenient and caring Sam
As Costco's old rival in the United States, Sam's has also adopted a similar business idea, focusing on quality and price, but Sam's has another advantage - more convenience.
So far, Sam's has opened a total of 47 stores in Chinese mainland, and Costco's number is less than a fraction of it.
In terms of "online and offline integration", Sam's has adopted a "store + cloud warehouse" model, where the stores are basically in the suburbs to provide an offline shopping experience, and the cloud warehouse is in the city, which is convenient for consumers to place orders online.
Just imagine, I don't know where to go to "walk the baby" on the weekend, and I can take the whole family to visit Sam's.
The audience can taste at will, you can also take photos and check in, and most of the day will pass, and you will fill the trunk and go home after eating and drinking.
If you think a certain snack is delicious and want to buy it back, don't worry about Sam being too far away, because you can still buy it on the mobile app, and Express will have it delivered to your home immediately.
It is also a "membership" model, which is different from Costco's unified card fee of 199 yuan/year, and Sam's membership fee is divided into two levels: 260 yuan/year and 680 yuan/year.
Moreover, Sam's pays more attention to the repurchase rate and renewal rate of members. If a member has applied for a card but has not gone to Sam's for a long time, there will be a staff member who calls to ask if they need help returning the card.
It is this idea of "constantly improving consumer stickiness" that makes Sam's sales so stable, and new stores have opened one after another.
Domestic brands fight back
In the face of Costco and Sam's siege, domestic supermarket brands did not sit still.
As a result, Hema came out with a "moving mountain price" and Meituan came out with a "tug-of-war price", since consumers care most about the price, then we don't fix those virtual ones, and directly reduce the price.
Originally, Hema also embarked on the road of "membership system", after all, it is a stable income every year, who doesn't want it?
However, soon after the start of "moving mountains", Hema announced that it would not support the opening or renewal of "Hema X membership" for the time being, and it was widely speculated that Hema might give up the membership system in the future.
If Hema can really make the price similar to Sam's, and there is no need to pay membership fees, plus the number of stores that are geometrically higher than Costco and Sam's, then there is still a battle for it.
After all, the family size in China's first- and second-tier cities is generally less than 4 people, and there are many young people who work hard alone. No matter how cheap a box of 12 Swiss rolls is, it is still a waste if you can't finish it.
In terms of product specifications, Hema and Yonghui still have a certain consumer base in the "no hoarding" route.
How should Costco and Sam respond to this in the future?
Write at the end:
In fact, whether it is Costco, Sam's, or Hema and Yonghui, they are not the losers of this "new retail war".
What has really been greatly affected are the traditional supermarket hypermarkets that are neither popular nor popular.