In the upcoming 2023, Shanghai's community supermarket track is booming. Hema has launched a "discount" reform, opening a number of Hema outlets, Dingdong Grocery has opened its first "Dingdong outlets", and the foreign brand ALDI is about to reach the large-scale milestone of opening 50 stores, and the development trend is improving.
The community supermarket is not a new track, but why is it so prosperous at this moment?How is it different from the community supermarket model of the past?Judging from the main direction of these entrants, independent brands and discounts have become the focus of this round of competition.
The independent brand has become a new highlight of the community supermarket.
On the track of community supermarkets, foreign brands and domestic brands are almost on the same starting line, with different advantages, but summarizing the characteristics of new entrants and insisting on independent brands is a major feature.
Originated in 1913 in Essen, Germany, ALDI is one of the pioneers of the private label model, and after more than 100 years of development, it has more than 10,000 stores in more than 10 countries around the world. ALDI held a first-class exchange meeting in Shanghai yesterday to share the recent brand trends in the Chinese market, the new launch of ALDI "value-for-money" series, the iteration of hundreds of self-brand products, and the optimization and upgrading of the store guidance system.
Since entering the Chinese market, ALDI China has largely inherited the global brand DNA of ALDI, positioning itself as a low-cost community supermarket and selecting high-quality and low-cost products based on consumer insights. Roman Rasinger, Managing Director of ALDI China, said ALDI has always been committed to providing Chinese consumers with value-for-money products and a shopping experience that "saves time, money and worry".
Chen Jia, Managing Director of ALDI China, said that the key to ALDI's ability to achieve "good quality, low price" lies in its core strategy: selecting products, developing its own brand and pursuing an efficient operating system.
The reporter learned that at present, 90% of ALDI's products are its own brands, involving a number of private brand product lines, from three meals a day, clothing, food, housing and transportation and other aspects to meet consumer needs. For example, Xunlu is a beverage brand, and Aldi Delight is its own snack and leisure brand. The recently launched "ALDI Value" will launch more than 100 brands one after another.
For example, for the soda biscuits in the ALDI "Value Value" series, ALDI combined market research and found that milk salt and sesame flavor are the flavors that consumers like recently. In the product development stage, ALDI focused on this flavor, and made great efforts in the selection of raw materials, using high-quality wheat core flour, whole milk powder imported from New Zealand and white sesame seeds, bringing consumers crispy, delicious and affordable soda crackers. More than 80% of the existing ALDI partners are local.
It is reported that in China, ALDI follows the strategy of streamlining SKUs, keeping the whole store at about 2,000 SKUs to meet the basic daily needs of the majority of Chinese consumers, of which about 1,500 are daily necessities, and other products are on the market. In terms of the location of the new store, ALDI chose to be located in the nearby residential community, residential buildings and commercial areas in order to better serve the surrounding residents.
Behind the discounting is the ** chain change.
In addition to the layout of foreign brands, China's fresh food e-commerce, including Meituan, Dingdong Food, Hema and so on, are also actively deploying community supermarkets.
Just recently, Dingdong Grocery opened its first "Dingdong Outlet", which is located in Jiuliting Street, Songjiang, Shanghai, with a store of about 500 square meters and about 1,000 SKUs. The reporter compared the price and found that the ** here is indeed cheap, especially in the early days of opening, 3 catties of Aksu apples are only 99 yuan, 400g of fresh pork belly 79 yuan, 950ml of fresh milk 79 yuan, 30 red heart eggs ** is 17$90 ......In addition, there are many self-made dishes, soy products, bread, etc. for sale.
At the same time, Hema announced the launch of the "discount" reform, and more than 5,000 products in Hema Fresh offline stores** were lowered. At the previous Hema New Retail Supply Conference, Hema CEO Hou Yi also said that Hema Outlets has more than 60 stores in Shanghai and will soon open to 100 stores: "The business of any store is very good, and there are thousands of customers every day. Because ** is lower than e-commerce, and only half of the hypermarket. ”
Behind the discounting, in fact, is the first chain change. Some experts said that it is not difficult to achieve low prices through temporary subsidies, and it can also be done by burning money. However, if the discount store wants to do it for a long time, it is necessary to achieve high quality and low price through the first-chain reform, and fight for profit margins. In Hou Yi's view, the discounted business model is not to sell cheap goods, but to sell good goods cheaply.
It is reported that the packaging of some commodities of "Dingdong Outlet" tends to be extremely simplified, and adopts larger packaging specifications, so as to reduce the cost of commodity links, and with the help of Dingdong Buy's existing ** chain scale and own production capacity, so that ** and quality are returned to the "price-quality ratio", plus this form of offline stores outside the core metropolitan area can save part of the costs related to operation and service, and finally can be achieved while maintaining the high quality of goods and market differentiation, the ** "knocked down".
Boston Consulting Group believes that China's retail market has reached such a time when it has to change, and it needs product differentiation and vertical integration of the first chain, which is a market law.
Author: Xu Jinghui.
Text: Xu Jinghui Editor: Shang Hui Responsible Editor: Tang Weijie.
*Please indicate the source of this article.