Talk of Asian Marketing Show 45 Department Stores Japanese Style
Channel: Chinese Consumer Connection
Date: 2011-03-26

Chinese Consumer Connection
More Chinese Consumer Research at http://ccc.qbook.tv

Great show this time, with on location video, lots of photos, and six great ConsumerCam videos! This time around, Clyde, Stephen, and James take a look at department stores in GreaterChina. In Taiwan, these mostly take the Japanese-style, with big nameJapanese department stores, like Mitsukoshi (the oldest Japanesedepartment store). Our CCC team visits Taichung, where three of thesebig department stores are in close vicinity to each other. The firstfloor is stuffed with the familiar global cosmetic brands and thesecond floor contains big airy stores with expensive global brands weall know. The store space tends to be open, full of air, over staffed,and not very busy. If you did not move up more floors, you might cometo a shallow conclusion, like "the world is flat," or some othernonsense. Take the escalators up though, and you find quite a differentretailing space. Space gets more crowded, prices go down, and renaoretailing starts to creep in. Some differences are the unique Japanese aspects, such as built in supermarkets.

Visitors to Greater China often drop in to department stores and observe brands from around the globe and file the observation away as a supporting fact for the popular idea of the "world is flat." In reality, the market share, and more importantly, the mind share, of these brands is quite small and are representative more of a small group of elite consumers who are global consumers, rather than representing any kind of local preferences.

Being a Japanese retailer, there is a strong skew in SKUs toward Japanese brands and a weak representation of American brands, except in the sports shoes, but a bit more of the European brands. A strong emphasis on sabisu (service) and tidy uniforms is present, but independent hawkers with head-mounted microphones blasting out a demo of the latest and greatest at a special sale price show we are still in a Chinese cultural setting. The giveaway is the sales floor. We take ConsumerCam into the cavernous sales temple inside the Sogo Department Store where inside-out retailing layout is the rule, loud music is playing, and where shoppers spend most of their time.

Supermarkets and big food courts, stuffed with plasticized food samples, round out the department stores. The supermarket is normally small scale and upscale. These satisfy the one stop shopper who lives a lifestyle defined by the big brands--stopping in to get some personalized service, and picking up groceries on the way. The food court satisfies a quite different market segment. Found here are tweens and teens out for fun with their friends during the week. On a weekend though, the food court satisfies the family groups who have targeted the department store as a family outing.