Taiwan FamilyMart Turns Crisis into Opportunity by Carrying Frozen Food Items in Insightful Response to Customer Needs
In keeping with Taiwan’s disease control policies, Taiwan FamilyMart implemented the necessary precautionary measures across all its locations; in addition, the convenience store chain offered fast, safe pre-order and pickup services for face masks and triple stimulus vouchers. Consumers could use the FamiPort kiosk, the Taiwan FamilyMart Membership app, or the My FamiPort app to quickly and easily pre-order and pick up masks and triple stimulus vouchers. Meanwhile, Taiwan FamilyMart’s zero-contact policy, enacted due to the pandemic, has brought about a 30% growth in non-cash transactions.
Taiwan FamilyMart has a keen understanding of the consumer market and its trends. Due to the pandemic, most consumers cut down on the number of in-store shopping trips, so the retailer began selling snacks, instant noodles, and other household food items in family packs as well as boxed prepared side dishes and frozen items during this period to satisfy their customers’ every need while they are stuck at home. This strategy helped Taiwan FamilyMart increase its sales of frozen goods by 20% and transformed the convenience store chain into an important repository of daily supplies in every community.
Thanks to the close collaboration and teamwork, from the PR department’s brainstorming to the marketing teams’ preparatory work, it only took Taiwan FamilyMart one night to come up with its in-app “buy a coffee, get one free” campaign to celebrate zero confirmed COVID-19 cases in Taiwan. The one-day only campaign successfully spurred sales by incorporating current events and brought in many new customers. “Reacting quickly is the key,” says Chen Wan-young, head of Integrated Marketing and Promotion at Taiwan FamilyMart, “Our success is built on a combination of key factors, including long-term planning for digital infrastructure deployment, timely communication with customers via our mobile apps, and smooth collaboration between different departments of the company, which in turn fosters a tight-knit organizational structure that enables all departments to come together and make quick and effective sales decisions.”
In conjunction with Taiwan’s triple stimulus vouchers, Taiwan FamilyMart launched a series of promotional campaigns to attract customers to pre–order and pick up their vouchers in-store. The company also offered Smart Purchase Cards in five different denominations and up to NT$ 600 in value that could be purchased for only NT$ 200 with either cash, triple stimulus vouchers, electronic stored value cards, or electronic payments (as accepted by the company). Taiwan FamilyMart has always been active in rolling out new services and marketing strategies to boost sales, and with the help of the increased traffic and purchasing power enabled by the triple stimulus vouchers, the company set off a multiplier effect in one fell swoop by combining mobile payments with brick-and-mortar retail locations.
