Last week, Wal-Mart opened a new store in Zhichunlu of Haidian district. The new supermarket covers 18,000 square metres and stocks around 20,000 items.
The opening of the new Wal-Mart store is no doubt a disaster for the local retailers near Zhichunlu area. For the past few days, they really suffered from losing customers while the new Wal-Mart store ia becoming more and more crowded.
Tiankelong, a local supermarket chain which has a branch 500 meters away from the new Wal-Mart store is heavily attacked by this retailing giant. Last Saturday afternoon was supposed to be a peak time for supermarket, but there were fewer customers than staff in Tiankelong. Tiankelong has tried to fight off Wal-Mart and did lots of promotion and discounting activities. But Wal-Mart seems unbeaten with one kilogram of watermelon selling for 1.1 yuan, compared to Tiankelong’s price of 2.5 yuan, later discounted to 1.5 yuan after discount.
– Information compiled from reports in Beijing Morning Post and on Xinhua websites