Dairy Farm International Holdings Ltd's Taiwanese supermarket unit Wellcome yesterday launched a credit card together with the Shanghai Commercial & Savings Bank (
Wellcome Supermarket (
The Shanghai Commercial & Savings Bank will start issuing the co-brand credit card in December, and Wellcome expects to attract 100,000 applicants during the next three months.
"We estimate that around 30 to 40 percent of the co-brand card applicants are the source of our new customers," said Wellcome's chief executive officer Alex Tay (
Wellcome estimated it seized around 20 percent of the NT$77 billion-worth supermarket busioness in Taiwan last year. The chain's chief operations officer, Howard Tsai, (蔡裕人) said there is still space to expand their business in Taiwan.
Tsai last week told a Chinese-language newspaper that the retailer wants to open four more stores by the end of the year, with annual sales of NT$15 billion. He said Wellcome is planning to have 200 outlets by 2005 with annual sales of NT$20 billion.
"It is a loyalty co-brand card," said Tsai. "We hope to establish a mechanism to attract loyal customers by understanding their shopping patterns and rewarding loyal customers with benefits through this card."
Wellcome's largest rival, Sung-ching Supermarket (
"Customers can pay NT$100 to obtain membership. Members are able to accrue points every time they shop in our supermarket and enjoy discounts or rebates by using those accrued points," said Liu You-chin (
Sungchin currently operates over 80 stores in Taiwan, accounting for around 8 percent of the nation's supermarket business. The chain claimed it has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in maintaining its membership database every year.
"Besides discounts and rebates, we regularly hold seminars on health issues, cooking classes, and even one-day tours to the places of origin of our vegetables and fruits, exclusively for our members ... This approach helps us keep strong relations with our loyal customers," Liu said.
"What matters to customers is the quality products that supermarkets offer, instead of the cash rebates provided by the co-brand card," Liu added.
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Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
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