When it comes to supermarkets, almost everyone has a familiar image in mind. Today, supermarkets of all sizes are scattered throughout every corner of the city, including international chain stores, local chain supermarkets, and independent supermarkets. Supermarkets are almost the primary shopping place for our generation.
-01- The Origin of Supermarkets
On September 9, 1916, the world's first self-service store, Piggly Wiggly, opened in Memphis, Tennessee, USA. At that time, its operator, Clarence Saunders, for convenience, placed goods directly in barrels for customers to pick and pay at a central checkout, which was the prototype of the supermarket.
In August 1930, American Michael Cullen opened the world's first supermarket, King Kullen, in New York State. During the economic crisis, Michael Cullen, based on his decades of food retail experience, precisely designed a low-price strategy and pioneered the product category pricing method. Supermarkets quickly became popular worldwide.
-02- Supermarkets in China
Looking at the story of supermarkets in the Chinese market, from the opening of China's first supermarket, Meijia Supermarket, in Dongguan in 1990, to the entry into the WTO in 2001, the supermarket industry entered a stable development phase. Now, the market scale has reached about 3 trillion yuan. From single grocery stores to chain supermarkets, from small independent supermarkets to Hema Fresh, from Carrefour to Yonghui Super Species, various types of supermarkets have emerged, bringing more convenience and meeting more personalized needs. So, what has driven this retail revolution that has lasted nearly a century?
-03- Driving Forces Behind Supermarket Development
"The birth of supermarkets originated from the economic crisis, and their popularity stems from human nature."
The birth and proliferation of a new social species often depend on the following three laws:
- The socio-economic development faces bottlenecks or is at a turning point. 2. Consumer needs change, and technological progress brings innovation and transformation. 3. Capital enters and drives the industry.
The original driving force behind the birth of supermarkets was the Great Depression. At that time, the U.S. socio-economic development hit a turning point, and consumers' pockets were shrinking, leading to a change in consumer demand: people urgently needed cheaper goods. So businessmen began to think: How to reduce the price of goods?
1. Self-service (customer self-service): Although there were many unemployed workers during the Great Depression, supermarkets chose open-shelf sales to save labor costs, allowing customers to serve themselves and pay at a centralized checkout. Unexpectedly, this was widely loved by consumers and promoted the rapid development of supermarkets. 2. Bulk purchasing: During the economic crisis, people's requirements for goods decreased; they only needed to meet basic needs, with low demands on style and quality. Therefore, supermarket goods were mainly daily necessities, and the large volume of similar products allowed supermarkets to purchase directly from upstream manufacturers, significantly lowering procurement prices. The industry chain was compressed to: supplier (manufacturer) → supermarket → consumer. 3. The spread of refrigerators: With the popularity of refrigerators, customers could buy large quantities at once, allowing supermarkets to lower retail prices.
Of course, these are just a few main reasons for the rapid development of supermarkets in the U.S. With the economic recovery in the late 1950s and rising per capita income, a large amount of capital began to flow into the supermarket industry, and the path of chain and brand development began. The world's top supermarket brand, "Walmart," was born.
At the same time, with the development of the automobile industry, ordinary families began to own cars, greatly facilitating the transportation of people and goods, removing a major obstacle to supermarket development, and the industry entered a take-off phase.
The birth of supermarkets in China was due to the reform and opening up in Shenzhen and Dongguan in the 1990s, when people began to have more money. Consumer demand changed: a grocery store with dozens or hundreds of SKUs could no longer meet everyone's needs, so some people began to think about putting more goods together for sale. Thus, China's first supermarket, Meijia Supermarket, was born in Dongguan. This strategy of high quality and a wide variety of goods immediately opened up business.
As you can see, the development of the supermarket industry fully conforms to the three laws above. For the retail industry, the four words "more, faster, better, cheaper" are always unavoidable, but at each stage, different combinations are used to suit customer needs and the social environment, like a food recipe.
The birth of supermarkets in the U.S. focused on "cheaper" and "more"; the start in China mainly used "more" and "better"; and now, for Hema Fresh and Super Species, they attract young, high-income groups through direct seafood supply and on-site cooking, using internet technology to improve checkout and delivery, greatly saving customer time, mainly highlighting "better" and "faster".
-04- Are Supermarkets Dying?
Today, in the era of the internet and artificial intelligence, the retail industry seems to be entering a new turning point. Online shopping has become a daily routine for most young people, and physical supermarkets are not doing as well as before.
Will we still need to go to supermarkets in the future? Many people think that in the future, convenience stores will meet consumers' immediate needs, and the rest can be handled online; there are also opposing voices that supermarkets, with a century of history, are the best form of physical retail, offering experiential advantages that convenience stores and other small shops cannot match, and will not exit the historical stage.
"Old soldiers never die; they just slowly upgrade their equipment and set off again" — He Fan
Supermarkets offer shopping experiences that online cannot match. For example, in a supermarket, we can smell the aroma of freshly roasted Beijing duck, see live fish swimming in water, feel the different sensations of various sizes of electric fans, and even enjoy the intimacy of shopping with the whole family.
The advantage of physical stores is experience, not price or cost. Now many supermarkets are gradually developing dine-in options, with fast food in ordinary supermarkets, and various specialty restaurants in Hema Fresh and Super Species, to enrich and satisfy consumers' diverse experiential needs.
Technology and the internet will not kill supermarkets; they will only better equip them. For example, electronic currency self-checkout, promotional methods combining mobile phones and in-store experiences, and perhaps soon, VR scenarios combined with physical experiences.
At the same time, we see Alibaba acquiring RT-Mart, Tencent taking a stake in Yonghui Superstores, and Suning.com acquiring Carrefour China. Internet technology companies are entering the traditional supermarket industry, which itself shows their confidence in the future of physical stores. This is also the future direction of supermarkets: the reconstruction of a retail ecosystem with omnichannel online-offline integration.
In the future, solutions will definitely be developed through shared supply chains to better integrate online and offline, solving and exploring customer needs. Through smart retail empowering offline stores, the customer experience in physical stores will feed back into online business. Our descendants will still shop in supermarkets; the difference will be the continuously evolving shopping experience.
Embracing change and leveraging strengths is always our best response to large-scale impacts.
Source: Selling Sugar Water's Old Pan (ID: gh_de7f7b550009) Tips will be paid 400-2000 yuan upon adoption.