In Japan, convenience stores are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Do you have a convenience store in your country?
In Japan, we can do a lot of things at these convenience stores.
Convenience store services
(Some services may not be offered in some stores.)
1. Withdraw cash from ATM
2. Reception of courier services
3. Copying and printing
4. Issuance of certificate of residence
In Japan, government offices are only open until 5:00 on weekdays.
It is very convenient for working people to be able to complete procedures at government offices at convenience stores that are open 24 hours a day.
5. Payment of utility bills
6. Receiving parcel deliveries
You can set the delivery address to a convenience store to receive the product.
7. Free wifi
8. Photo printing
How many are there in Japan?
As of January 2021, there are 56,948 convenience stores in Japan.
It's so hard to find an area without a convenience store.
Seven-Eleven is No. 1, FamilyMart is No. 2, and Lawson is No. 3 in the store count ranking.
And those convenience stores are always competing with each other, and each of them is famous for their excellent marketing strategies.
Layout of a convenience store
Although there are so many convenience stores, the layout of the store is almost the same. The reason for this is because they are perfectly arranged and have been carefully calculated.
The store layouts are designed to make it as easy as possible for customers to enter and walk around the store as much as possible.
The wall near the entrance facing the outside is made of glass and has magazines on it.
The wall near the entrance facing the outside is made of glass, and magazines are placed on it so that customers can see them from outside as they browse through the magazines. Seeing someone inside the store makes it easier for other customers to enter the store without worry.
On the farthest wall from the entrance is a bento box, which is said to be the best-selling item in the convenience store.
Another wall is the beverage area.
Customers will see snacks and sweets in the middle of the store while they choose their drinks and lunches.
And the customers will want to buy sweets and snacks after their meal as well.
Store assortment
Convenience store items are more expensive than those in supermarkets. Here is another mechanism that makes you want to buy at a convenience store even so.
This is the fact that the assortment of products in each store differs from region to region.
In most convenience stores, the following data is collected, and the assortment is decided based on the results of the analysis.
1. Data collection at the cash register
2. Data collection by point cards
3. Data collection through SNS
Seven-Eleven Data Collection
This system of data collection at the cash register(POS system) was first introduced in Japan by Seven-Eleven in 1983.
The average daily sales of 7-Eleven varies between 120,000 yen and 200,000 yen compared to other chains.
This is not only the result of excellent data collection.
It is generally believed that convenience stores order the best-selling products based on the sales data from the POS system, but this is a complete misconception. Data is only used to verify a hypothesis.
The great thing about Seven-Eleven is the way it utilizes data and human capabilities.
Seven-Eleven store management
At Seven-Eleven stores, even part-time high school students are entrusted with ordering.
Even a part-time worker who is not much more than an amateur can handle the task of placing orders, which affects the management of the company, because of the repetition of hypothesis and verification.
Based on prior information such as tomorrow's weather and local events, they hypothesize tomorrow's hot sellers and place orders. Since they have placed the order themselves, they take responsibility for selling out the products, so they devise creative ways to display the products, make POP advertisements, and talk to the customers.
They then verify the results of their sales with the sales data from the POS system. If the product sells well, the hypothesis was correct. If it doesn't sell well, the hypothesis was wrong, and the results will be used for the next hypothesis.
One of Seven-Eleven strengths is its ability to thoroughly hypothesize and test hypotheses, even down to part-time staff, and the ability of each individual to read data.
Also, I think it is a great thing for part-time staff to be given the opportunity to verify whether their data analysis is correct.
Which job do you find more rewarding, the one where you just have to follow the manual and run the cash register, or the one where you can improve it with your own ingenuity.?
convenience stores with no employees at the cash register
High school students who analyze data are kind of cool, aren't they?
It was reported that FamilyMart will open about 1,000 unmanned convenience stores with no employees at the cash register by the end of fiscal 2024.
What kind of data will be obtained at these convenience stores, which are equipped with ai cameras? How will the convenience stores evolve from this data?
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