1, how many years has this store been open?
Store owner: Heads and tails about 9 years.
2. Has your store always been in this location?
Store owner: No, I used to open across the street, about 5 years ago, the opposite side of the rent expires, it cost 320,000 to buy this store. Has been until now.
3, can you talk about the details of your store in the past few years?
Store owner: No problem. About the first half of '93, I rented the store across the street for 500 yuan a month, began to operate a convenience store, at that time due to this area of housing has not yet been officially delivered, the front of the Steeple Gate Farmers Market has not yet been officially put into operation, so it is temporarily relatively cold, the business is not very good, but I know that it does not take long to here will certainly be lively. Soon across the street opened a lot of stores, farmers market is also open, this area was immediately lively, my business is also red hot for a while, people buy vegetables home will pass through here, bring something back. But it did not take long, the opposite side also opened a convenience store of the same nature, despite the impact, but the old customers still like to come to my place to buy things. In the first half of 1997, my rent expired, and before that I had spent 320,000 dollars to buy a bigger store across the street, which is now this one, and the one I was competing with closed at the same time, and my business was booming for a while. But the good times do not last long, due to the farmers' market across the supermarkets continue to be accepted by people, people's sense of purchase has also produced certain changes, the supermarket's cheap prices to attract a large number of customers, there is also in the vicinity of the farmers' trade opened about three convenience stores, due to the house is their own do not have to share the rent fee, slowly reduced the price of some goods, business has been is to maintain to the present, and there are 2000! You give me some ideas, after you are basically clear.
4, you mean I suggest you overnight service and a certain degree of delivery is it?
Store owner: Yes.
5, so can you tell me in a little more detail about the changes in business since it was implemented at the time?
Store owner: It's not really an all-nighter, my store basically closes around 4am, which is the closing time of the neighborhood chop shop. During this period, many late, like to come out to eat late night will come to buy cigarettes, drinks, snacks and so on, the store therefore increased income, sometimes can sell hundreds of it. As for the delivery of takeaway well, in fact, the store's overall income, although there is a certain increase, but it is not great, because we are sent to the neighborhood of some of the old customers, if they do not have us to send the words, usually will come down to buy, I think that this is not very cost-effective.
6, oh, is this ah, then please be more specific about some of the additional costs here?
Store owner: There are a lot of fees here. First of all, the tax: there are state and local taxes, industrial and commercial management fees, there are three bags of fees in front of the door, the residential area of the green fee, sanitation fees, a few years ago, there is what the security fee, and much more.
7, then you are all these costs are counted in the store expenses?
Store owner: Yes, we will have a monthly settlement, all the fees are apportioned settlement, apportioned settlement but you taught me oh. (Laughs)
8, you can be more specific about home delivery?
Store owner: Yes. We are only responsible for sending a roughly 200-meter radius (which I summarized based on her introduction), and business has increased somewhat because of this, and the people who originally bought from the store next to us will sometimes call us for some reason. But that doesn't happen a lot, it's still basically like I said earlier, regular customers mostly.
9, since the neighborhood store business also more or less pulled a little over to you, then why other stores do not carry out home delivery?
Store owner: I can't figure out this question, my husband is half-shift, will be free to come to the store, so you can provide home delivery to some of the people who need it, while the other stores as far as I know are only one person, so it's difficult to implement home delivery.
10, then why don't they, including yourself, specialize in hiring a number of people to provide a wider range of home delivery services? This may be able to better reflect the superiority of this way of doing business oh.
Owner: We have thought about this, but we are still afraid to try. Because there are more stores here, people can get to the store without having to walk too much, so I'm afraid to take care of people, but business will not be much better.
11. Do you want me to do it for you first?
Store owner: Sure, if you have time (laughs).
Part II Summary of the Experimental Record of Home Delivery Service
I had already considered home delivery for small convenience stores before I visited Star Convenience Store, and in order to further prove my idea that home delivery is a competitive advantage for small convenience stores, I took a bold step to make an attempt.
On Feb. 3, I printed 500 copies of a home delivery price list for Star Convenience Stores and distributed them to 500 mailboxes in residential areas, stating that home delivery was free. I then took charge of home delivery.
On Feb. 3, I completed seven home deliveries and earned $488 in cash. Two of the deliveries were under my responsibility, three were to previously undelivered recipients, and the commodities delivered were a carton of Want Want milk, a case of bottled Double Deer beer, and three large bags of toilet paper. Without proving how much of a difference those 500 price lists made, let's take a look at the number of households sold and the revenue generated from that date to February 13th. See Figure 1
Figure 1
From the graph we can see that there is a slow upward trend in the number of home delivery service recipients, which more or less already proves that home delivery is worth a try for small convenience stores, and that people are responding quite favorably. Due to the intervention of the New Year, the effect of our experiment is not quite obvious, but from the oral statement of the store owner, this kind of lively home delivery situation has not appeared before, and in the first three days after the 8th day of the first month, according to the reply said that the number of households per day delivery average in about 10 households, and the region is constantly is a little bit to expand, and price lists sent to the home of the amount of shopping there is a certain amount of increase. And because of the price list sent to make the star convenience store's popularity also increased a lot, the more distant people also began to pay attention to the star convenience store.
Through this period of detailed experimental records and observations, and coupled with the previous understanding of the stars convenience stores, small convenience stores is the dominant advantage of small, small has its flexibility, how to use this flexibility has become a convenience store success or failure, whether it can be the key to long-term development and growth. The third part of the small convenience stores exist
Disadvantages and solutions
Since the emergence of large supermarket retail, small convenience stores, the shortcomings and disadvantages of the very obvious exposed. Here mainly pointed out two points:
1, there is absolutely no advantage in price, whether from the purchase channel, or sales volume is unable to compete with, so the price is unlikely to be equal or lower with the supermarket. To win with low prices is simply impossible.
2 In the richness of varieties, small convenience stores can not do as large supermarkets such a wide range, only in full consideration of regional differences, people's lifestyles on the basis of the difference, choose the most frequently purchased goods, and some unique goods for sale.
3 is also the most important, is his small. It is also mainly because of the smallness that the previous two points are flawed. But his smallness is also an advantage. This is explained in more detail below.
So small convenience stores are not possible with large and medium-sized supermarkets, take the same or similar sales methods and management methods, should have their own unique features, give full play to their small advantages, flexible response.
Here Star Convenience Store gives us a better inspiration:
1, due to the variety is not rich in the choice of goods sold and the way, there should be a very unique side. Star Convenience Store has a good grasp of the tricks of the trade. For example, in the sale of bulk cookies, stars convenience stores have fully utilized the asymmetry of the information of the business customers, you can reach 50% of the profit. Will have some small packages of cookies bundled sales, that is, a variety of different prices of cookies sold together, calculated the highest profit sales method. This way the customer can have a variety of flavors of cookies and the merchant earns the maximum profit. Also sell a large number of unbranded, but the flavor of the unique cookies, this kind of low purchase price, the market volume is small, there can be a lot of profit margins (which is based on the basis of a special channel).
2, the best location for a small convenience store is in a residential area, and to be as close as possible to the farmer's market, the more guests passing through your convenience store, the better. Star convenience store on this aspect of a great advantage, it happens to be in the upper Steeple Gate residential area of the busiest small street, and from the farmers market is relatively close, but on this point alone, there are two stores is more advantageous, just in the market of the necessary intersections. The Farmer's Market neighborhood alone has a concentration of two-thirds of the smaller convenience stores in the entire residential area (within the scope of my interview survey).
3, overnight service is a small convenience store is a magic weapon, he really reflects its small flexibility. However, to be able to really do overnight service is also to have certain objective conditions, in your business area whether there is the possibility of overnight service, the flexibility of the cost of overnight is small enough, or simply put, is the overnight service is really profitable. The reason why Star Convenience Store is able to do overnight service is inseparable from the location of its store, as we have clearly known from the above visit, there are many overnight operation of the rows in the vicinity of the store, which is the root of the problem.
4, take the flexible delivery service is a small convenience store competitive advantage embodied. To this we do further analysis. Earlier we have seen that home delivery has a certain degree of effectiveness, and here we will compare the two perspectives horizontally and vertically, to see if the home delivery service is a good sales approach for small convenience stores. First of all, a horizontal comparison: I have visited several representative convenience stores in the neighborhood during this period, and none of them has hired home delivery attendants; only the seven wholesale grocery stores in the neighborhood are equipped with tricycles and delivery attendants. So a simple comparison of this will show the advantages of home delivery. Generally, convenience stores set up a larger table in front of the store door during this New Year's period, laying a more colorful floral cloth to set a festive mood and serve as a convenience for customers. Because of my experiment, the stars of the convenience store has a standardized home delivery process, simple data show that the stars of the convenience store a day of sales is about 10% of other convenience stores, which is the home delivery to reflect the advantages of fully tap the potential customers. Secondly, then do a vertical comparison, because there is no detailed historical data, only from the memory of the owner of the store, this stage of the New Year's sales compared with the past few years in the same period of time, there is a great increase, and basically increased in beer, beverages, and door-to-door delivery of the main commodities is exactly the beer, beverages, cigarettes, as well as bulky items. From these two aspects, it is easy to see that home delivery is a small convenience stores to carry out an effective means of competition.
But there are a few very fatal problems in the Star Convenience Store:
First of all, the convenience stores I visited are family-oriented, family-oriented, which is not necessarily bad, but the Star Convenience Store has done a very bad job, which is mainly reflected in the management of his expenses and funds is quite confusing, the expenses mentioned in the visit, not the convenience store expenses and family expenses are treated separately, for example, not the national tax revenue is not the same as the cost of the family, but it is not a good idea to use a small convenience store. For example, they do not record the national tax, local tax, industrial and commercial management fees differently from the management fees of the residential area such as sanitation fees, security fees, etc., but they are all counted together in the convenience store's cost expenses. Although these costs are not very high and do not have much impact at present, if these costs increase it will cause a lot of confusion in the store's cash management. That's why it's pretty critical to treat store expenses differently from household expenses, and it's an issue that must be addressed for this type of household management.
Secondly, it is slow to receive information, for example, on this year's beer sales, the Star Convenience Store realized only after the New Year that Budweiser was the hot spot this year and Blue Ribbon was almost stagnant, but he had already bought a large amount of Blue Ribbon beer at the end of the year. This kind of low grasp of information is a great deficiency of the small convenience store. If it could have gotten a good grasp of this information when it stocked up at the end of the year it wouldn't have been in this situation.
Finally, in the way of service, the stars convenience store to the old customers can be sold at a fairly cheap price, while the new customers are first to a higher point of the price of the first test, and then in the strain, that is, the price of the less transparent. This will be difficult to grasp new customers and not easy to make new customers trust.
How to grasp the advantages, overcome the disadvantages, and seek new and unique ways of doing business is the key to the development of small convenience stores, and learn to use new technology tools. I also found that branding is also quite important for small convenience stores, a good brand image, can attract more new customers, and the impact is huge.
Part IV Summary of the survey visit
The development of the retail industry in China is also just a few years, the business management experience from abroad tends to large supermarkets, while in our country small retailers are a fairly large team, but they have is a small business, there is no special set of methods suitable for their own development. So the observation and study of small convenience stores is quite necessary, the above survey just as a simple reference.