Taiwan FamilyMart Co (全家便利商店) on Wednesday said it is planning a capital expenditure of NT$10 billion (US$333.02 million) over the next three years to sharpen its competitiveness in the retail sector.
“Retailers are confronted by many challenges today,” FamilyMart chairman and CEO Yeh Jung-ting (葉榮廷) told attendees at a book launch on Wednesday, citing the nation’s aging population and the emergence of e-commerce platforms.
E-commerce brings great convenience to people, but it also affects how customers value things, Yeh said.
The NT$10 billion budget is part of the convenience chain operator’s response to a rapidly changing business environment.
More than half of the money is to be used to conduct a “new retail” strategy, which aims to integrate e-commerce services and its brick-and-mortar business, the nation’s second-largest convenience store operator said in a statement.
The strategy would include expanding capacity at the company’s logistics centers nationwide to improve the efficiency of its in-store pickup service and e-commerce deliveries of frozen products, the statement said.
FamilyMart plans to increase investment in data analysis tools to develop more precise marketing strategies for different customer groups, the company said.
Apart from the “new retail” strategy, FamilyMart also aims to differentiate itself from local competitors and increase customer “stickiness” by selling more prepared hot meals customized for nuclear families and singles.
The company also seeks to collaborate with local restaurant brands to develop “shop-in-shop” in Taiwan next year, it said, without elaborating.
FamilyMart, which has 3,143 outlets in Taiwan, posted cumulative revenue of NT$53.75 billion for the first 10 months of this year, up 6.27 percent from NT$50.58 billion in the same period last year.
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