The booming customer-to-customer (C2C) business has stimulated President Chain Store Corp’s (統一超商) sales in a number of services, including store-to-store delivery and printing services.
In an annual market research report released last week, the nation’s largest convenience store operator reported more than 70 percent growth in sales related to C2C services compared with the same period last year.
President Chain Store is constantly launching new products and services, it said, adding that it provides more than 600 services through 7-Eleven “ibon” kiosks.
During the past year, more than 170 million transactions were completed on the “ibon” platform, the report said.
However, it is the retailer’s logistics system that has attracted consumers to the kiosks at 7-Eleven stores, because both buyers and sellers can use any 7-Eleven store to collect or deliver packages from the fast-growing C2C e-commerce environment, such as the Carousell (旋轉拍賣) auction site, which is popular among smartphone users, the report said.
Small businesses also helped boost printing services at 7-Eleven stores, the report said.
From postcards to photographs, more than 70 million pages were printed last year, it said.
President Chain Store marketing group chief Tony Hsieh (謝蓮塘) told a media briefing last week that small businesses tended to print menus or advertisements at convenience stores to save costs.
Mobile phone printing has also seen significant improvements, Hsieh said.
President Chain Store plans to launch more mobile services for C2C e-commerce users in the second half of this year, and hopes to allow customers to upload and print multiple sheets at the same time by scanning QR codes.
The company is also seeking to establish a partnership with Buyee, a Japanese buying and bidding service provider, to provide cross-border shipping services, Hsieh said.
“Digitization is the inevitable trend nowadays and companies have to face the challenges,” Hsieh said.
Since it is impossible to satisfy people’s needs merely by smartphones, “we aim to provide a better and more diversified experience to our customers when they walk into convenience stores,” he added.
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