Financial dilemma: once in its heyday, it experienced a decline.

As early as the early 1990s, small and medium-sized supermarkets in Guangzhou were once prosperous. Later, due to the staking of supermarkets such as Trust-Mart and Baijia, free buses were sent to pick up and drop off shoppers, and a considerable number of consumers were successfully snatched from small and medium-sized supermarkets. From 65438 to 0998, "Sunshine", "Jintian" and "Yuexiu", which were once called "five golden flowers", withdrew from the historical stage one after another. Guangnan Supermarket 200 1 with 24 branches in Guangzhou closed down. The local supermarket "Five Golden Flowers" only has Hongcheng Supermarket. In 2005, Jiayi Island, the first local supermarket in Guangzhou, which had created a miracle of the rapid development of Guangzhou's retail industry, declared bankruptcy, and 47 branches of Harbour Supermarket, which was caught in a capital chain crisis, closed down one after another.

Shengjia, which has 37 branches in Guangzhou, once rebuilt and expanded its stores in order to expand its clothing sales. However, due to various factors, it has shrunk its business and returned to the business model of small and medium-sized stores. "In terms of price, small and medium-sized supermarkets are lower than warehouse stores; On the scale, it can't compare with one-stop hypermarket; In terms of flexibility, it is not as deep as convenience stores in residential areas. To this end, it is difficult for small and medium-sized supermarkets in Guangzhou to spread out on a large scale and achieve a win-win balance point. " Huang Huajun, president of First Business Network, said that there are great variables in this industry. So far, there is no mature and reproducible profit model, so the competition is very cruel.

Service orientation: an opportunity for small and medium-sized supermarkets

But this does not mean that small and medium-sized supermarkets in Guangzhou have no chance. "Now the cost of doing a hypermarket is higher. Due to the financial crisis in 2009, a huge price war was set off in multinational supermarkets. The reduction of customers has caused many enterprises to lose money and the operating costs have further increased. " Chen Kai, general manager of Hongcheng Supermarket, said that Hongcheng, which witnessed the rise and fall of local small and medium-sized supermarkets in Guangzhou, has always adhered to steady development and constantly tried to enrich value-added services to consolidate its consumer groups and increase its attractiveness.

Hongcheng continues to integrate other convenience services in the community. Hongcheng Card can be used not only in Gome and furniture stores, but also in laundries and auto beauty repair shops.

"The development of small and medium-sized supermarkets cannot be blindly followed, nor can they catch up. The best and most likely way to succeed is suitable and meets your own needs. " A researcher of small and medium-sized supermarkets said that the positioning of stores must be accurate, such as the supermarket of Guangzhou Friendship Store, which is the consumption support of Friendship Store to solve the consumption of some shopping card balances. Doing what competitors can't or don't want to do is also the way out for small and medium-sized supermarkets. The differences between different regions in China are much greater than those in Europe and America. Food has a strong regional character, which brings unlimited business opportunities to enterprises. For example, Fujian Yonghui manages the proportion and profit model of fresh food in Fuzhou market, and even Carrefour and Wal-Mart are not as good as themselves.

"Taste is a high-end supermarket, but it's not just expensive." Jane Li Hong, managing director of Baijia China, said that two-thirds of the goods here are the same as those in Baijia Jiazheng Plaza, and the price of coke is also 2 yuan. However, TAST E's target consumers are not all consumers, but some fashion consumers. According to reports, there are hundreds of kinds of bread in TAST E E E supermarket, and the raw materials have diverse tastes. In addition, with the help of Watson Group's purchasing background, its imported goods are complete and diverse, which is impossible for other supermarkets.

"Retail is an industry where all kinds of enterprises can survive." Geping Guo once described the future of small and medium-sized supermarkets like this: "Although small and medium-sized enterprises are at a disadvantage, they should know their own advantages. Only in this way can they play a better role and gain a foothold in the competition. "