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Chain stores attract more shoppers

By Jiang Jingjing (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-07-04 09:27

Although domestic chain store retailers play a dominant role in China's retail sector, overseas companies operate one to two times more efficiently than local firms, a newly released report indicates.

The report into chain store retailers says there were 1,416 large and medium-sized operators in China last year, 92.3 per cent of which were domestic players.

There were a total of 90,476 outlets, 94.2 per cent of which were local brands, says the report, jointly released by the National Bureau of Statistics, the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) and China's General Chamber of Commerce yesterday.

Chain store retailers achieved a combined revenue of 1.07 trillion yuan (US$134 billion) last year, 87.2 per cent of which was generated by domestic firms, the rest went to overseas invested operators.

China's chain store sector has experienced rapid growth since it first came to the country in the early 1990s, said Huang Hai, assistant minister of commerce.

"The sector grows by an average of 20 per cent a year and is making a huge contribution to the nation's economy," he noted.

For last year, the number of retailers and their revenue grew by 34.2 per cent and 27.1 per cent respectively.

However, Huang pointed out that domestic enterprises still lag behind overseas rivals in areas such as marketing, logistics, personnel management and information technology.