两位零售传奇离场：做大与做小 留给行业的考题是什么？

This article examines the recent passing of two Asian retail legends to unpack the core logic of brick-and-mortar retail, delivering clear key industry insights and actionable takeaways for readers looking to open their own physical stores.

1. Core context: In May 2024, Toshifumi Suzuki, Japan’s "Father of Convenience Stores" who redeveloped 7-Eleven for the Japanese market, and Yin Yen-Liang, chairman of the Ruentex Group that brought RT-Mart to mainland China, passed away sequentially. The two men represented the era of small-format convenience retail and the era of large-format hypermarkets respectively, and their passing marks the entry of brick-and-mortar retail into a new phase of restructuring.

2. Key takeaways: The fundamental question of retail has always been: "why do consumers need you?" The core of convenience stores is not a good location or small footprint—it is precise matching of on-demand needs and refined time-segmented operations, backed by a robust operational system. For hypermarkets, the core is not large space or extensive assortment—it is targeted organization of one-stop family shopping. Only physical retailers that grasp this essence of consumer demand will have a viable future.

This article analyzes the passing of two retail legends to map shifting trends in brick-and-mortar retail formats, offering valuable insights for brands on channel strategy and product development.

1. Shifting consumer trends: Brick-and-mortar retail is currently in a period of restructuring. Traditional advantages—prime location for convenience stores, large size and wide assortment for hypermarkets—have weakened. Consumer demand is growing increasingly fragmented: immediate needs are now captured by instant retail, while aggregated family shopping has been split across multiple new retail formats.

2. Product development direction: Brands supplying convenience stores need to adapt to differentiated demand across different business districts, adjust SKUs by time of day, and match specific on-demand consumer needs. Brands supplying large retail channels need to align with the new positioning of transformed hypermarkets, developing products tailored to family meal solutions, large-pack high value-for-money offerings and other matching niches.

3. Channel strategy guidance: Brick-and-mortar retail will not disappear, but only formats that find clear positioning and meet specific consumer demand will survive. Brands need to adjust their channel footprint to track format changes and align with the needs of different formats.

This article maps current industry changes in brick-and-mortar retail, outlining existing challenges, opportunities and core actionable lessons for physical retail sellers.

1. Industry status and risk warning: A widespread pain point in today’s brick-and-mortar sector is that many stores have lost their reason for being needed by consumers. Outlets that only copy the surface of a format without grasping the core of consumer demand will be eliminated. Relying solely on a good location is no longer a competitive advantage for convenience stores, just as relying solely on large size no longer works for hypermarkets.

2. Core actionable lessons: Small-format operators should learn from Toshifumi Suzuki: the core is to precisely match the immediate demand of customers within a 300-meter radius, adjust product assortments by time of day, use data instead of experience for decision-making, and avoid blindly rolling out a one-size-fits-all national template. Large-format operators can learn from RT-Mart’s original success: the core is to clarify your own positioning in today’s family consumption landscape, and give consumers a clear reason to make a special trip to your store.

3. Growth opportunities: Brick-and-mortar retail still has a future. As long as you grasp real consumer demand and re-answer the question of "why do consumers need you", you can unlock new room for growth.

This article analyzes current trends in the transformation of brick-and-mortar retail channels, offering insights for manufacturing factories across product development, business opportunity identification and digital upgrading.

1. Shifting product design and manufacturing requirements: Downstream retail channels have increasingly segmented demand for goods. Products supplied to convenience stores need to fit differentiated demand across different business districts and time periods, with instant and fresh food requiring faster turnover and stronger supply chain capabilities. After transformation, hypermarkets have clearer demand for products aligned with their new positioning, such as large-pack high value-for-money goods and family meal solution offerings.

2. Business opportunities: The entire brick-and-mortar retail sector is undergoing restructuring, and both small and large formats are repositioning themselves. Factories can follow these channel shifts, develop products tailored to channels with different positioning, and capture new incremental growth opportunities.

3. Insights for digital upgrading: Toshifumi Suzuki advocated using data to optimize inventory decades ago. Factories also need to advance digital transformation, align production plans with channel demand data, cut inventory, boost turnover efficiency, and match the refined operational requirements of downstream retail.

This article maps current development trends and common pain points in the brick-and-mortar retail industry, pointing out clear business directions for retail service providers.

1. Industry development trends: Brick-and-mortar retail will not disappear, but it is undergoing widespread systemic restructuring. Both of the traditional core formats—convenience stores and hypermarkets—need to reinvent themselves, as the entire industry searches for a clear positioning that answers "why do consumers need us?".

2. Core client pain points: Most convenience stores have only copied the surface design and product mix of Japanese models, failing to deliver refined demand matching and lack the capability for differentiated operations. For hypermarkets, common pain points include high operating costs, lack of clear post-transformation positioning, and gaps in core capabilities such as differentiated product assortment, efficient fulfillment and user retention.

3. Direction for solution development: Service providers can develop targeted service offerings: for example, providing convenience stores with district- and time-specific product planning and digital inventory management systems; for hypermarkets, offering transformation positioning consulting, on-demand fulfillment systems and membership operation services, to capture the incremental service opportunities brought by industry restructuring.

This article analyzes the evolution of brick-and-mortar retail formats, offering insights for offline retail marketplace operators across merchant acquisition, operations management and risk mitigation.

1. Core merchant needs: Both small and large offline merchants need platform support that aligns more closely with their positioning. Small stores need supply chain and data management support to enable refined operations, while large-format stores need traffic, fulfillment and operational support after transformation.

2. Merchant acquisition and footprint direction: When onboarding new merchants, platforms should not prioritize outlet size or surface appearance. Instead, they should prioritize merchants that have already identified their positioning and can clearly explain why consumers should visit their stores, and phase out merchants that rely only on location or size and lack core competitiveness.

3. Operations and risk mitigation: Platforms should guide入驻 merchants to pursue differentiated positioning, help convenience stores implement refined operations tailored to local surrounding demand, assist hypermarkets to clarify their transformation direction, and avoid the risk of the entire platform losing user appeal as offline outlets become obsolete. At the same time, platforms should adjust their own positioning, highlight the experiential value that offline retail offers over e-commerce, and strengthen core competitiveness.

This paper uses the passing of two retail legends as an entry point to analyze the current stage and core issues of China’s offline retail industry, providing clear research directions for retail industry scholars.

1. New industry trends: After the era of convenience retail and the era of hypermarkets, Asian retail has now entered a phase of systemic restructuring. New formats including e-commerce, instant retail, warehouse clubs and discount stores have siphoned demand from the two traditional formats, weakening their traditional competitive advantages, and the entire offline retail sector is undergoing a widespread repositioning.

2. Core new research question: Against the backdrop of competition across multiple formats, the core open question for today’s offline retail is how brick-and-mortar outlets can re-answer the fundamental question: "why do consumers need offline retail?" Today, a large share of offline outlets have already lost their reason for being needed by consumers, which is the core problem the industry currently needs to solve.

3. Research implications: The essence of retail has not changed—it still revolves around meeting consumer demand. The two classic original models—going small and precise, or going large and one-stop—both need to be updated. Future research can focus on how different formats can restructure their value, and explore new retail models adapted to today’s consumption landscape.