Analysis Of Competitive Advantages Of Small-medium Chain Supermarkets

Modern Chain Operation (MCO) was born in the United States in 1859, its history is over 140 years till now. It has set off the third revolution of retailing. It is a new mode of operation and business ideas with the great vitality and bright future. The MCO has developed maturely in foreign countries, and there are a lot of tycoons in retailing marketing. With the pace of retail industry opening, foreign giant retail corporations fight for the Chinese market, such as Wal-Mart, Carrefour and Metro. At the same time, some local chain supermarkets desire to compete with the international enterprises by reorganization and combination. Be faced with the strong domestic and foreign competitors, how to find its own development space in the vast retail market for Chinese small- medium chain supermarkets? This is not only a realistic topic but also a hard topic.The matter of fact, there are plenty of academic research on the retail industry in these year. But the research on competitive advantage of small-medium chain supermarket in China is little. The main study of the retail industry is on the point of the overall and the main research object is concentrated on the Shanghai Lianhua , Wal-Mart, Carrefour and other domestic and foreign large supermarkets. The studies of typical small- medium chain supermarkets are so few. Because of the shortage of theoretical studies and the urgent need of practice , I come to the study. Based on economic globalization and Chinese opening up for retailing enterprises, the paper analyses the competitive advantages of small-medium chain supermarket, and it analyses Chinese small-medium supermarkets via the Porter's competitive advantage model, and it elicites the determining factors of competitive advantages, structure, the formation of competitive advantage, the development process and the problem. It presentes the recommendations for the establishment of small-medium supermarkets based on the successful experiences of Changchun Yuanfang supermarket.This paper is consisted of five chapters.In the Chapter 1, it deals with the paper's background, the purpose, the significance and the methods, as well as the entire thesis structure.In the Chapte2, it focuses on the theory of the small-medium supermarkets and competitive advantages, presents the definition of competitive advantages and small-medium supermarkets, and introduces the Porter's competitive advantage model in detail.In the Chapter 3 , it is the main body of the paper. It selects the Porter's competitive advantage model for academic study on the base of small-medium chain supermarket actuality and the theory of competitive advantages. It explains the principles and methods of Porter's competitive advantage. And it has summed up the competitive advantages of small-medium supermarkets as follow-networks and places, customer loyalty, localization, policy and flexibility. Meanwhile it presents the problem of the small-medium supermarkets-lacking of financing, lacking of strategic planning capacity, lacking of characteristics of the goods, backward of the information management and data analysis, lagging of the logistics distribution and lackink of human resource.In the Chapter4, it tests the application of small-medium supermarkets'competitive advantages in our country from actual situation. Chose the Changchun Yuanfang supermarket as the sample to verify the conclusions.In the Chapter5, it puts forward some proposals for small-medium supermarkets to nurture the competitive advantage based on the successful experiences of Changchun Yuanfang supermarket.