Digital Innovation of Convenience Stores in Taiwan

Proceedings of ‏The 3rd International Conference on Business, Management and Economics

Year: 2020

DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33422/3rd.icbme.2020.03.27

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Digital Innovation of Convenience Stores in Taiwan

Sulin Chung

ABSTRACT: 

In recent years, digitalization has become a critical issue for all industries. In this study, I focused on the digital innovation of convenience stores in Taiwan as a part of my researches on retail internationalization of Japanese convenience stores. I began with distinguishing between IT innovation and the digitalization. Then, I compared the IT innovation and digitalization of two Japanese-style convenience stores in Taiwan. Furthermore, in a deeper case study on Taiwan FamilyMart grasped, the characteristics and impacts of digitalization on the convenience store’s business were discussed. I also analyzed the mechanism of digital innovation in Taiwanese convenience stores. The analysis has indicated that 2 external factors have been affecting the digital innovation of convenience stores in Taiwan; the changing retail external environment surrounding convenience stores; and the government’s digitalization policy. Internal factors related to Taiwan FamilyMart are training, practice, and culture of allowing a mistake. Finally, the relationship between the digitalization of convenience stores and the stage of retail internationalization was investigated. I conclude that the digitalization in recent years has been promoting the embedding strategy of Japanese-style convenience stores in Taiwan.

Keywords: Digitalization; Growth strategy; Localization; Retail internationalization; Taiwan FamilyMart.