Convenience Stores Transform Taiwan(2) | 台湾超商传奇(2)

Urban Oases:

我爱便利商店？

台湾超商传奇

本篇中英文节录自《台湾光华杂志》

九十九年七月第三十五卷第七期

『我爱便利商店？――台湾超商传奇』

Convenience stores have set off one consumer frenzy after another. Right now the most notable is freshly-made coffee, for which you will even see people lining up early in the morning. Failing in its first attempt to sell fresh-brewed coffee back in 1986, 7-Eleven came out with its new, low-priced City Café line in 2004. Following a successful 2007 marketing campaign featuring actress Guey Lun-mei, 7-Eleven has been selling 30 million cups of coffee per year. Not surprisingly, in 2008, Family Mart and Hi-Life announced that they too were jumping into the fresh-brewed-coffee market.

In 2005, 7-Eleven stores began Taiwan's first-ever convenience-store-centric promotional activity—if you spent NT$77 during any single visit, you could get a Hello Kitty magnet. With heavy media coverage, the promotion became an islandwide craze. The success of the campaign was astounding, and the fervor for figurines of iconic characters has yet to fade even today. Besides the huge popularity of Hello Kitty, the fact that the magnets were given away with every purchase of NT$77 or more really hit its mark with the consumer psychology of "It's free, so why not take it?" Customers ignored the fact that they were spending extra money in the stores.

In convenience stores, which are typically less than 100 square meters in size, there are both a sense of flow and a sense of place. These allow people in a hurry to shop, take care of errands, and go, while they also give people pausing in them a sense of familiarity almost like home. These miraculous spaces have generated new whirlpools of activity, the pull of which has become nearly inescapable.

――translated by Phil Newell

便利商店引爆的消费风潮一波接一波，现在最『夯』的，则首推一大早就要排队的现煮咖啡了。早在 1986 年就曾贩卖现煮咖啡失利的统一超商，2004 年卷土重来，推出平价品牌『City Café』，2007 年女星桂纶镁为品牌代言大为成功，现在一年卖出超过 3 千万杯咖啡。因此在 2008 年，全家、莱尔富也相继宣布加入战场一点也不令人意外。

2005 年，统一超商推出史上第一回全店整合式营销活动──只要购物满 77 元，就可以拿到一只 Hello Kitty 磁铁。在媒体强打下，果然成功引爆全民搜藏热潮。此波营销活动威力惊人，全台超商『公仔热』至今不减，探究原因，除了 Hello Kitty 本身的强大人气外，每满 77 元即『免费』赠送，紧抓住消费者『不拿白不拿』的心理诱因，让消费者浑然忘了自己所付出的成本。

　　便利商店不出 30 坪的小小店面，既要有『流动感』又要有『地方感』，要让赶时间的人买了东西、办好了事就走，也要让想驻足的人有回到家般的熟悉自然。这样的神奇空间冲撞出一种新漩涡，你我都不自觉地踏入其中，再难逃脱。

本社为尊重《台湾光华杂志》，中文原文注销，仅供参考，中英文如有不尽相符之处，敬请包涵。