The Sam’s Club on the outskirts of China’s capital is not, technically speaking, a drive-through operation. But almost all of the customers at the Walmart-operated discount warehouse drive there to shop and are prepared to pay as much as Rmb175 ($30) for a bag of imported Massachusetts cranberries.
Walmart’s international expansion of its Sam’s Club chain, which in China targets increasingly affluent customers in the country’s largest cities, is an important part of the US retailer’s strategy to offset stagnant sales in its home market.
It is part of Walmart’s efforts to “reset” its business in China, where it has had a poor return on investment in recent years and made a series of missteps in its haste to grow.
The expansion of Sam’s Club is also tapping into a trend that is transforming Chinese consumption habits: the rapid growth of China’s car market.
“About 90 per cent of the people who shop in our Sam’s Clubs drive to the club versus our Supercenters, where that number can be as low as 10 per cent,” says Greg Foran, head of Walmart’s China business, on a tour of one of Beijing’s two Sam’s Clubs. “They’re coming to this particular location maybe once a month and they’re buying enough items to last them that month?.?.?.?The frequency of shopping is less but the value of [each customer’s] basket is a hell of a lot more.”
Walmart operates about 400 stores in China. It recently announced plans to close 15 to 30 stores – including some with bad locations and layouts that it regrets – and to open 110 new ones as it takes a fresh run at expansion.
Some other closures stem from overlaps with Trust-Mart Stores, the Taiwanese-owned retailer it acquired in 2012, but Walmart still expects a net gain of 70 to 80 stores during the next three years. “We’re closing some stores because we got enamoured with growth [in China],” says Ray Bracy, a senior vice-president for Walmart in China. “We were focusing more on growth than we were on quality in some cases. We’re not going to do that again.”
Only 10 of its China outlets are Sam’s Clubs, although Walmart is now opening two in the country every year and three of its biggest-selling Sam’s Clubs are located in the country. Unlike Walmart’s more
traditional Supercenters, Sam’s Club outlets make money from annual memberships rather than sales, which simply offset each club’s operating costs.
According to Shaun Rein, a Shanghai-based retail consultant, early attempts by retailers to cater to car owners stalled, especially in downtown locations. “Traffic congestion was too serious,” he says. “A lot of consumers still wanted to go by bus or by metro.”
But as city-centre rents drove Sam’s Clubs, Ikea and other outlets to more suburban locations that were also easier to drive to, they began to catch on with richer car owners. The Sam’s Club in southern Beijing is located just off the city’s fifth ring road.
Shoppers at Sam’s Clubs pay an annual membership fee of Rmb150; a cost of entry that has not changed in the 17 years since the first outlet opened in the southern city of Shenzhen. There are now 1.7m members countrywide, translating into an annual income of Rmb255m.
That is only a fraction of the $1.9bn in operating income Walmart reported for its Sam’s Club stores globally in 2012, including more than 600 outlets in
the US.
The large parking lot outside the Sam’s Club in southern Beijing, which was previously a car sales centre, is an indication that the customers it serves are upwardly mobile. Walmart is concentrating the discount warehouses in the outskirts of “tier 1” and “tier 2” cities – primarily provincial capitals and independently administered conurbations such as Beijing and Shanghai – where incomes and car penetration rates are highest.
Annual per capita gross domestic product ranges between $7,100 and $12,700 in top-tier cities, compared with $4,100 and $5,400 in the smaller third- and fourth-tier cities where Walmart is aggressively expanding its network of Supercenters.
Sam’s Clubs also offer a much more limited selection of goods – 4,000 items as opposed to as many as 60,000 in a typical Supercenter – with an emphasis on carefully chosen higher-priced products, many of them imported. “In a club I’m often offering you a choice of one,” Mr Foran says. “In here, it’s Levi’s or it’s not denim.”
In China, a typical Sam’s Club displays products not usually carried by local stores, such as the imported Massachusetts cranberries; 10 pairs of “Made in the USA” athletic socks for Rmb119; or Indian bath towels on sale for Rmb98 each.
Such imported items account for about 30 per cent of Sam’s Club annual sales in China – which the company does not reveal – versus only 5 per cent in a Walmart Supercenter. Mr Foran expects the value of imported goods sold at his 10 Sam’s Clubs in the country to increase fivefold during the next year alone.
Mr Foran points to a display of Post brand Blueberry Morning cereal, imported from the US, which is selling only about 12 boxes a day despite a prime position along the store’s centre aisle.
“In a location like this, that’s not a great sales cycle,” he says. “But we’ll persevere for a period of time and see what happens.” Sometimes customers have to be led to the items they don’t know they like yet, he says.
“When we started selling muffins, the response was: ‘You can’t sell muffins – people in China don’t like muffins’,” Mr Foran adds, noting that assertion did not tally with all the muffins he saw on sale at Starbucks coffee outlets across the country.
“And here we are four or five months down the track and it’s the number one item in the bakery department.”
严格说来，位于中国首都市郊的山姆会员商店(Sam’s Club)并不是一个提供免下车服务(drive-through)的购物场所，但几乎所有光顾这里的顾客都是开车来的。并且，他们愿意出175元人民币（合30美元），购买一袋进口自美国马萨诸塞州的蔓越莓。山姆会员商店是一家仓储式折扣超市，由沃尔玛(Walmart)运营。
为应对美国本土销售业绩增长停滞的局面，沃尔玛采取的一项重要措施，就是将旗下的山姆会员商店连锁店向全球扩张。在中国，山姆会员商店在扩张时瞄准的是中国一线城市中那些日益富裕的消费者。
这是沃尔玛为“重整”在华业务所做努力的一部分。近年来，沃尔玛在华所做的投资收益糟糕，并在急速发展的过程中出现了一系列失误。
山姆会员商店的扩张还能利用一个正在改变中国人消费习惯的大趋势：中国汽车市场的快速增长。
在参观北京的两家山姆会员商店之一时，沃尔玛中国区总裁高福澜(Greg Foran)表示：“来山姆会员商店购物的顾客中，约有90%是驾车前来的，而在沃尔玛超市，顾客驾车前来的比率仅为10%。这些人可能每月只来山姆会员商店一次，但他们一次采购的商品就足够满足一个月所需……在山姆会员商店，顾客购物的频率相对较低，但（每个客户）购物篮里的物品金额远远超过普通超市的顾客。”
沃尔玛在华拥有约400家门店。该公司不久前宣布，它计划关闭15至30家门店，其中一些门店的位置或布局不佳，令其对当初的决定感到后悔。此外，该公司还计划重启扩张战略，新开110家新店。
还有一些门店计划关闭的原因则在于，这些门店与好又多(Trust-mart)门店的覆盖区域出现重合。好又多是一家台资零售商，2012年被沃尔玛收购。但在未来三年内，沃尔玛预计仍将净增70至80家门店。沃尔玛中国区高级副总裁雷?布雷西(Ray Bracy)表示：“我们关闭了部分门店，因为我们过去在中国过分痴迷于追求扩张。在某些情况下，我们对扩张的关注超过了我们对效益的关注。今后我们将不会再犯这种错误。”
沃尔玛眼下在中国仅有10家山姆会员商店，而沃尔玛现已计划每年在中国新开两家山姆会员商店，此外，全球销售业绩最为耀眼的山姆会员商店中，有3家位于中国。与沃尔玛等更加传统的超级市场不同，山姆会员商店盈利靠的是收取会员卡年费，而不是销售商品，它们从销售商品中取得的收入仅够抵消每家门店的运营成本。
驻上海的零售业咨询师雷小山(Shaun Rein)表示，零售商早前为迎合有车者的需求所进行的尝试陷入了停滞，特别是在市中心地区。他说：“交通拥堵太严重，很多消费者仍然愿意乘坐公交车或地铁前往卖场。”
但随着市中心租金节节高涨，迫使山姆会员商店、宜家(Ikea)以及其他零售商向城郊迁移，这些商家开始吸引更加富裕的有车一族，因为搬到城郊后驾车前往这些地方更为方便。山姆会员商店在北京南城的门店位于五环外不远处。
山姆会员商店的顾客每年需缴纳150元人民币的会员费。自从17年前山姆会员商店在华南城市深圳开设第一家门店以来，它的会员年费标准就一直没有变过。目前山姆会员商店在中国共有170万名会员，每年的会费收入达到2.55亿元人民币。
沃尔玛报告称，山姆会员商店全球所有门店（包括在美国的逾600家门店）2012年总运营收入达19亿美元。与这个数字相比，中国山姆会员商店的会费收入简直不值一提。
位于北京南城的那家山姆会员商店外的大型停车场（那里曾是一个汽车销售中心）表明，其所服务的顾客群体在经济地位上呈上升趋势。沃尔玛将这类仓储式折扣卖场集中布局于中国一线和二线城市（主要是一些省会城市、以及北京、上海等直辖市）市郊，这些地区的居民收入和汽车保有率位居中国前列。
中国一线城市的人均年国内生产总值(GDP)在7100美元至12700美元之间，而三线和四线城市的人均年GDP仅在4100美元至5400美元之间。沃尔玛眼下正在三线和四线城市快速扩张其超市网络。
山姆会员商店的商品种类也比一般超市少得多，仅有4000种，而正常超市的商品种类通常能够达到60000种。此外，山姆会员商店主推一些精选出来的高价商品，其中很多都是进口的。高福澜表示：“在山姆会员商店，一个品类通常只提供一种商品供客户选择。比如，牛仔裤的品牌就只有李维斯(Levi's)。”
在中国，山姆会员商店售卖的商品通常是本地超市所没有的，例如从美国马萨诸塞州进口的蔓越莓，标价人民币119元、“美国制造”的10双装运动袜，或是每条售价98元人民币的印度浴巾。
这些进口商品占到了山姆会员商店在华年销售额（沃尔玛并未公布这一数字）的约30%，而在沃尔玛超市，进口商品的销售额占比仅为5%。高福澜预计，仅在未来一年中，中国10家山姆会员商店的进口商品销售额就将增加4倍。
高福澜指向了一个展示台，那里陈列着进口自美国的Post牌蓝莓味早餐麦片(Blueberry Morning cereal)。虽然展示台位于卖场中心通道旁的黄金位置，但这种麦片每天仅能卖出约12盒。
他说：“就这样的核心展示位置而言，目前的销售情况并不理想。但我们会坚持一段时间，看看会发生什么变化。”他表示，有些时候商家必须引导消费者，去发现他们尚不知道自己会喜欢的商品。
高福澜补充称：“我们刚开始销售松饼时，得到的反馈是，‘你不能卖松饼，中国人不喜欢吃松饼’。”他指出，这种说法不符合他在中国各地的星巴克所看到的情况，星巴克就在销售松饼。
“而如今我们出售松饼已有4至5个月了，它是烘焙部门最畅销的商品。” |
|
