Following several years of declining sales due to low footfall during the pandemic, value sales through department stores fully recovered in 2022. While one small department store closed, all leading players, including Shin Kong Mitsukoshi, retained their…
Home improvement and gardening stores and homewares and home furnishing stores experienced several years of decline from 2020-2021, when consumers who wanted to use their additional time during the social restrictions to carry out do-it-yourself (DIY) hom…
Competition between leading players within the two largest channels in value sales terms, pharmacies (Great Tree Pharmacy) and health and personal care stores (Watsons and Cosmed), intensified in 2022. Great Tree Pharmacy, which leads the largest and most…
Major appliances and electronics specialists, including Senao, Tsann Kuen 3C, and E-Life Mall, continued to enjoy further sales growth in 2022. Combined with another wave of COVID-19 in Taiwan in April, sales of certain products considered as helping to s…
Apparel and footwear specialists recorded dynamic value growth in 2022 compared to the previous two years when a weak performance was driven by pandemic-related restrictions and local consumers avoiding in-store shopping. During this time, sales growth th…
The consumption habits of Taiwanese changed during the pandemic, with purchases of fresh groceries and hot food items from traditional wet/food markets (which mainly comprise the majority of small local grocers in the country) switching to modern channels…
Following a dynamic performance in 2020 and 2021 when home seclusion at the height of the restrictions saw many Taiwanese regularly cook their own meals, value growth of supermarkets stabilised over 2022, with busy local consumers returning to out-of-home…
Retail sales of hypermarkets notably increased during the first year of the pandemic in Taiwan, benefiting from the surge in bulk purchases of food and daily essentials. In addition, leading players rapidly developed or enhanced their e-commerce capabilit…
Convenience stores continued to drive overall sales and performance of convenience retailers in 2022, with leading chains 7-Eleven and Family Mart benefiting from the high temperatures during the summer, during which local consumers travelled more regular…
In 2020 and 2021, the fundamental shifts in society engendered by the COVID-19 pandemic pushed sales via e-commerce to unprecedented heights in the US. Indeed, even though store-based retail bounced back in a big way in the US in 2021, as many consumers l…
Subway, one of the US’s largest limited-service bakery chains, announced in November 2022 that it would be installing smart vending machines across the country. The machines use AI software to improve customers’ experience. For instance, customers can int…
The direct selling channel has historically had a different relationship with economic downturns than other retail channels in the US. Previous downturns often led to increased recruitment of sales representatives, benefiting direct selling companies’ bot…
The department stores channel in the US has long faced severe headwinds. 25 years ago, department stores were the first places that millions of consumers across the country would turn to for their apparel and cosmetics needs, but even though sales of clot…
In 2020, as the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US kept many residents confined to their homes, the sales of home improvement and gardening stores soared, as consumers without much else to occupy their time turned to home improvement activities i…
2021 was an impressive year in terms of the sales performance of US retail pharmacy chains. The US government actively integrated these companies into its federal COVID-19 pandemic response, utilising their stores as distribution points for COVID-19 vacci…
After a steep decline caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, appliances and electronics specialists had a banner year in 2021, with retail value sales coming in higher than they were even in 2019. In 2022, however, economic headwinds and a particularly …
In 2020, COVID-19 decimated the store-based sales of apparel and footwear specialists in the US, but in 2021 the channel came roaring back. In part, this was due to the fact that the majority of US consumers were ready to psychologically move past the pan…
Customer loyalty is of high importance in the retail industry, but perhaps most of all for small local grocers and other independent retailers that lack the size and financial backing of large parent corporations. Since the start of the pandemic in early …
A planned merger between supermarket companies Kroger and Albertsons would have a substantial impact on the US supermarkets channel. These retailers, which are the two largest players in supermarkets in the US in value terms, announced in October 2022 tha…
As US consumers began to psychologically move past the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, many returned to shopping in bricks-and-mortar stores again. Many hypermarket operators anticipated that this surge in consumer spending would continue into 2022. As a resul…