用商品力穿越周期 用会员经济深度进化

This article outlines the new development directions of China’s convenience store industry, with key takeaways summarized as follows:

1. The industry’s core logic has shifted. While competition used to center on store count, location, traffic and digitalization, it has now shifted back to products themselves. Consumers have evolved from prioritizing convenience to seeking "worthiness," and are increasingly willing to visit a store specifically for products they desire.

2. Today’s convenience store products are evolving in three major directions: private labels, exclusive offerings, and scenario-specific positioning, which deliver more differentiated choices, emotional value and unique consumer experiences.

3. Convenience store membership services are also upgrading: instead of simple point-collection discounts, operators are now building daily lifestyle entry points by offering services such as pre-paid coffee packages, parcel pickup, and cross-store in-store pickup for pre-orders. The core goal is to cultivate long-term consumption habits and deliver service experiences that align more closely with consumers’ daily needs.

Against the backdrop of shifting retail dynamics, this article lays out development directions for convenience stores and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brands, with key insights as follows:

1. Shifting consumer trends: Overall consumption has become more rational; consumers are fatigued by price wars and have shifted focus from shopping convenience to "worthiness." They are willing to travel to stores specifically for differentiated products, and increasingly value the emotional value, experience and sense of lifestyle that products bring.

2. Product development priorities: Brands should focus on building differentiated products, prioritizing private labels, regional exclusives, co-branded seasonal limited editions, and functional and emotion-driven products. Creating unique offerings only available from your brand builds a competitive moat around products. According to NielsenIQ data, private label penetration in China’s convenience store sector will reach 83% by 2025, and private labels already contribute roughly 30% of the industry’s gross margin, making them a key growth driver.

3. Operational direction: Brands should combine product strength with membership economy, leveraging membership programs to cultivate long-term consumption habits, reduce users’ price sensitivity, boost brand loyalty, and escape the vicious cycle of pure price competition.

Against the current backdrop of eroding foot traffic and intensifying competition in the convenience store industry, this article lays out clear response strategies and highlights untapped opportunities, with key takeaways as follows:

1. Risk warning: The old playbook of expansion through new store openings, price wars and traffic-driven marketing no longer works. Convenience stores face foot traffic diversion from multiple channels including discount snack stores, on-demand retail, food delivery platforms and live-stream e-commerce. Cutting prices to attract foot traffic alone cannot build long-term competitiveness.

2. Transformation direction: Operators need to shift from channel competition to product competition, proactively strengthening in-house product development capabilities, and building differentiated products along three core directions: private labels, exclusive offerings and scenario-specific positioning. This creates a reason for consumers to visit your store specifically and builds product-led competitiveness.

3. Growth opportunities: Operators should upgrade their membership economic models, shifting from simple point-collection discounts to building lifestyle entry points. Services including pre-paid plans, pre-orders, parcel pickup and integrated point ecosystems help cultivate long-term consumption habits. Combining front-end product strength with back-end membership operations boosts visit frequency and delivers stable long-term growth.

This article outlines the new product demands emerging in China’s convenience store industry, and highlights new business opportunities and transformation directions for FMCG manufacturers, with key insights as follows:

1. New product design and manufacturing requirements: Convenience stores’ demand has shifted from standardized, general-use products to differentiated, customized offerings. Manufacturers need to partner on developing products with unique specifications, custom features, regional exclusives, co-branded limited editions, fresh food, and healthy functional and emotion-driven products to meet convenience stores’ need to build differentiated competitiveness.

2. New business opportunities: The convenience store industry is aggressively expanding its private label offerings. NielsenIQ data projects private label penetration will reach 83% nationwide by 2025; leading domestic convenience store brands already source 15% to 20% of their SKUs from private labels, and private labels contribute roughly 30% of the industry’s gross margin. This creates significant incremental order volume for customized production for manufacturers.

3. Transformation takeaways: Manufacturers that rely solely on large-volume orders for standardized general products will struggle to capture new opportunities. To align with the convenience store industry’s new demands and capture the dividends of industry transformation, factories need to build capabilities for small-batch fast production, consumer insight and collaboration on product planning.

This article summarizes the development trends and core pain points of China’s convenience store industry, and outlines new service directions for retail-related service providers, with key insights as follows:

1. Industry development trends: The convenience store industry has completed its phase of channel expansion and digital traffic competition, and has now entered a new stage focused on product competitiveness and in-depth membership operations. Service providers need to adjust their service focus to align with this industry shift.

2. Core customer pain points: The industry broadly faces declining foot traffic caused by multi-channel diversion, and pure price competition cannot build long-term competitiveness. Most store operators lack the capabilities to develop differentiated products and run in-depth membership programs.

3. Solution directions: Service providers can develop targeted offerings to address these gaps: on one hand, they can help convenience stores conduct consumer demand insight, product planning and private label building; on the other, they can support convenience stores in building full-scenario membership systems that cultivate long-term consumer habits. This empowers convenience stores to build core competitiveness and solves the industry’s core pain points.

This article outlines the transformation needs of the offline convenience store industry, and lays out development directions for all types of retail platforms, with key takeaways as follows:

1. Core industry demand: Offline convenience stores’ top priorities today are building differentiated product competitiveness and upgrading membership operation systems to cope with competitive pressure from foot traffic diversion and cutthroat price competition. Platforms need to adjust their service offerings to align with these new demands.

2. Existing problems: In the past, most platforms overemphasized traffic empowerment, channel expansion and digital tools, and neglected to empower merchants to build product capabilities. This left merchants trapped in price war cycles, unable to build long-term competitiveness, and also undermined platforms’ own long-term development.

3. Platform operation directions: In merchant recruitment, platforms should prioritize onboarding convenience store brands with strong product capabilities. For operations, platforms should provide support for product development and consumer insight, while helping convenience stores integrate online-offline membership systems and build out lifestyle service capabilities. This not only helps convenience stores build core competitiveness, but also reduces the risk of cutthroat traffic competition across the platform, enabling long-term stable development.

This article identifies new trends in the development of China’s retail convenience store industry and summarizes a new development logic, offering high reference value for industry research. Key insights are as follows:

1. New industry trends: The retail industry has gone through phases of channel expansion competition and digital traffic competition during the e-commerce and new retail era, and is now returning to the core of retail: the overall competition has shifted from channels to products, forming a new dual-driver development logic of "product competitiveness drives resilience across cycles, and membership economy fuels deep industry evolution."

2. New industry challenges: Against a backdrop of internal and external uncertainty, the industry now faces problems including consumer diversion and cutthroat price competition. The old growth model reliant on new store openings, promotions and traffic tactics no longer works, and the industry as a whole must address the core question: "Why should consumers make a special trip to my store?"

3. Summary of the new business model: In the future, the core competitiveness of convenience stores will no longer depend on store count or location quality, but rather on the combined capabilities of differentiated product development and cultivating long-term user habits. Front-end product strength creates a reason for consumers to visit, while back-end membership economy boosts repeat visit frequency and builds long-term stable consumer relationships. This new industry development direction deserves further in-depth research.