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As the convenience store industry continues to show steady growth with sufficient government support and capital investment, it has already become a key focus of the retail market. Digital-centered transformation will pioneer the next stop for the convenience store industry. With consumer needs at the core of the new retail ecosystem, digitalization has become a crucial means to cope with changes and challenges.
The convenience store industry, characterized by continued stable development and high-frequency scattered transactions, is experiencing increasingly diversified development with multiple outsiders swarming into it. E-commerce companies striving to empower traditional shops are actively establishing offline retail networks by means of resource integration and digitalization.
Foods and beverages have contributed most sales growth for convenience stores, and meanwhile promoted the sales of other categories of products to some degree. Based on the results of 7-Eleven’s survey on Chinese consumers, snacks, beverages, and dairy products are the top three categories that consumers will choose after purchasing other products.
China owns a unique digital environment where the continuous deepening of digitalization has made a profound impact on many aspects of the retail industry. The proportion of e-retailing in overall retail reaches the highest level globally. Taken together, 57% of retail sales in China’s retail market has been affected by digitalization. In such a trend, retail enterprises’ capability in digitalization has become a significant factor in winning future success.
Owing to the fact that e-retail sales growth has slowed down year by year, e-commerce enterprises like Alibaba and JD.com have begun to accelerate the integration with offline resources in order to gain more space for growth and imagination. As the new retail era approaches, the trend of online and offline integration is becoming an important factor that will affect the development of convenience stores in China.
Foreign convenience stores in China as we have seen, start early in information system building and digital transformation, however, domestic convenience stores lag behind in the course of digitalization, subject to further optimization.