Discussion on the generation and development of chain convenience stores

With the acceleration of China's urbanization process, the new type of business chain convenience stores to meet the demand for convenience as the goal has achieved a relatively rapid development. China's convenience store goods and services are becoming increasingly diversified, the convenience store industry is facing enormous pressure and challenges.

First, the emergence and development of convenience store chains

(a) the origin of the convenience store

ConvenienceStore (ConvenienceStore) originated in the United States in the early 1940s, due to the wide variety of supermarket goods at that time. Because supermarkets had a wide variety of products, covered a large area, and were mostly located in the suburbs away from busy areas, they wasted a lot of time and energy for shoppers who only wanted to buy a small amount of specific goods or meet current needs. The emergence of convenience stores filled this gap in purchasing needs, and in 1946, the world's first convenience store, 7-ELEVEN, was born. Although the convenience store originated in the United States, the booming development in Japan has made the convenience store chain a truly unique commercial retail format.

(2) Classification of convenience stores

Convenience stores are usually divided into traditional and gas station type two. Traditional convenience stores are usually located in busy areas of the city, covering a wide range of people, in order to facilitate the people, timely for the purpose of business, business miscellaneous supplies, laundry and cosmetics, food, beverages, etc., and to provide food heating, cell phone charging, payment of utility bills and other humane service projects. Gas station-type convenience store usually refers to the gas station as the main convenience store. With the further integration of the network and convenience stores, network convenience stores have become an innovative type of convenience stores, providing customers with convenient and fast goods and services through the combination of e-commerce and traditional convenience store formats. The network convenience store has a buy-now, deliver-at-home, to meet the requirements of customers' urgent convenience needs.

(C) the characteristics of the convenience store

Chain convenience stores are wholly owned or controlled by the chain company opened under the control of the headquarters to carry out a unified mode of operation. The company's standardized management, to achieve a unified store design, ordering, distribution, settlement, by the headquarters, each store and distribution centers. Convenience stores have the convenience of distance, time, service and shopping. Convenience stores in the location closer to customers, stores, covering a wide range of business area of 50 to 150 square meters, long business hours, generally 16 to 24 hours, year-round, highlighting the timeliness, service convenience, to provide customers with free microwave heating, payment of utilities, silver card repayment, cell phone recharge, collection of courier, ticketing and other convenient services.

(D) the current situation of China's convenience stores

Since October 1992, Japan's 7-ELEVEN convenience stores to enter the Shenzhen, China was born the first convenience store. Relative to the United States, Japan, Thailand and other countries started late, the development is lagging behind, but the chain of convenience stores in China has a very broad space for development. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, as of 2014, China opened a total of 16,832 convenience store stores, the number of employees at the end of the year 78,100 people, annual merchandise sales of 34.597 billion yuan, an increase of 11% over 2013.

Second, China's chain of convenience stores in the development process of the problems

(a) convenience store positioning is not clear

Convenience stores are evolved from supermarkets, and their shopping functions overlap in nature. At present, most of China's convenience stores and supermarkets lack of distinction, only the size of the difference in scale, the goods and supermarkets supply goods similar to the lack of product differentiation, daily necessities of the sale of price competition in the weak. At the same time can not accurately locate the target customers, the lack of characteristics of goods and services, the general lack of strategic commodities by the competitiveness of the packaged food and groceries, can only buy popular commodities, few independently developed or dominated the development of other people's characteristics of the goods, resulting in convenience stores and supermarkets, these two types of business is difficult to carry out the differentiation of the competition, did not highlight the convenience store service, convenience ` characteristics of the advantages of the convenience store to meet the demand for consumer convenience as a convenience store, to meet the needs of consumers. Consumer convenience needs as the first purpose of the convenience store.

(2) location issues

China's convenience stores in the location strategy is similar to the supermarket, more gathered in the vicinity of the residential area, while the convenience store's radiation area range of 300 to 500 meters, the convenience store store store site is too dense leading to increased competition, profits are not high or even lead to losses.

(C) ignore the information construction

In the rapid development of information technology in today's society, information technology has long been the core competitiveness of global business management. And China's convenience store industry on the importance of information technology construction degree of understanding is not profound, can not effectively use information technology to obtain, analyze data, enhance the efficiency of the enterprise supply chain, the degree of information technology is low. Only as a tool for confirmation, measurement, recording, the lack of use of surveys, analysis and other means of distribution planning, resulting in decision-making errors, incorrect business management strategy, which led to the slow development of the convenience store industry.

Three suggestions and countermeasures

(a) Create a differentiated brand strategy

Convenience stores should pay attention to the differentiated strategy with supermarkets, and find out the requirements for the development and design of new products by collecting, organizing, and analyzing the information and requirements of consumers' demand for certain types of goods. By collecting, organizing and analyzing information on consumers' demand and requirements for certain products, we can find out the requirements for developing and designing new products, choose suitable manufacturers to produce them or set up factories to produce them, and ultimately sell them under the brands developed by the convenience stores. Cooperating with suppliers to develop self-branded products can enhance the originality of products and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, which is an important strategy for the future development of convenience store chains. At the same time, the correct choice of commodity types, convenience stores should focus on food, beverages, urgent needs, necessities, highlighting the unique advantages of convenience stores, focusing on the creation and development of ready-to-eat fresh food. Convenience stores should also provide diversified convenience services, from the source to create a differentiated competitive strategy with supermarkets, increase the payment of utility bills, cell phone recharge, bus card recharge, ticketing services, courier delivery, collection, fax, copying services at the same time innovative types of services, the development of dry cleaning, housekeeping, home emergency and other related convenience areas, highlighting the business advantages, and continue to bring better service to the residents, not only to meet the needs of the consumer This not only meets the diversified needs of consumers, but also avoids price wars caused by homogeneous goods, and opens up more profit models for enterprises. In addition, due to the high turnover rate of convenience store staff, companies need to improve the incentive mechanism, regular sales staff to facilitate service training, enhance the sales staff service awareness, correct service attitude, improve service skills, to provide consumers with better quality, more convenient service.

(2) Diversified site selection

Site selection is an important long-term investment, with long-term, difficult to adjust the characteristics. Good site selection should take into account the population distribution, opening costs, urban construction planning, logistics supply and competition, such as the location of convenience stores, the implementation of diversified site selection strategy to open up the subway station, the new higher education institutions campus, large entertainment venues and other emerging markets. At this stage, the competition of convenience stores in big cities is increasing, and at this stage, convenience store chains should focus on second- and third-tier cities by giving full play to their small scale and flexible operation, adjusting the appropriate strategic planning, and taking the road of development in small towns, in order to avoid opening up new sales channels, reduce the pressure of competition, lower the operating costs, improve economic efficiency, expand the brand awareness of convenience stores, save the consumers' shopping time, meet their shopping needs, and gain consumers' sense of reliance.

(C) pay attention to the impact of information technology on the convenience store

Convenience stores from their own characteristics of small storefront area, the scarcity of storage space resources, the strict requirements of the inventory, the procurement mode is mostly small batch of frequent purchases, centralized distribution, and therefore the logistics and distribution system to carry out a reasonable control and management. Convenience stores should conduct satisfaction surveys with the support of a strong information system, collect customer feedback, and utilize big data to grasp the potential needs of consumers. According to the sales data in the database, reasonable analysis should be carried out to optimize the combination of goods, reasonably display the goods, improve consumer satisfaction, and predict the future demand of goods. In terms of internal management, it attaches importance to human resource management informatization, provides network job training services for convenience store employees, and also serves as an important basis for employee performance appraisal. In addition, the convenience store should pay attention to the importance of the network, and e-commerce cooperation to achieve **** win, through online shopping offline delivery, the goods purchased online can be delivered to the door in a short time, to meet the consumer's even demand.