I just finished my weekly grocery shopping at the Yaohan Centre tonight, and I happen to find its marketing strategy quite interesting.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Yaohan Centre (which is interesting because I could almost conclude that you are not of Asian-descent), here is an overview of the centre straight from Wikipedia:
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Yaohan Centre (八佰伴中心) is a shopping centre in the Golden Village district of Richmond, British Columbia. It caters mainly to Asian ethnic groups, mainly those of Chinese and Japanese descent. It is located on Richmond’s busy Golden District shopping district, and is next door to another Asian-centric mall, Aberdeen Centre.
Yaohan Centre was owned by the Japanese company Yaohan until the company’s demise in the late 1990s. The President Group, a Taiwanese company which also owns the President Plaza mall next to Yaohan, took over the management of the mall ever since.
It is anchored by Osaka Supermarket, which belongs to the group of T & T Supermarket chain stores.
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As mentioned above, Yaohan caters mainly to Asian ethnic groups, and if I’m to apply my terrible marketing knowledge to this fact, I would say Yaohan uses a concentration strategy and targets the demographic segment of Asians. It creates a completely Eastern atmosphere with virtually every tag, label, and product written in both Chinese and English. All of its employees are fluent in Cantonese and some Mandarin Chinese. And you will find nothing but typical Eastern food such as sushi, mooncakes, and dumplings.
I hope you are following me up to this point because I’m really gonna push it now by doing a simple SWOT analysis on the Yaohan situation.
It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out the strengths of the Yaohan Centre, as it captures the massive Asian population which resides in Richmond and all over BC. On the other hand, concentrating on the Asian community has its drawbacks because Yaohan will never be as widely recognized as the more inclusive supermarkets such as Costco and Safeway. This also limits its ability to capture opportunities of really expanding its influence.
— But the possible threat of the Yaohan franchise going down the drains?? I see none, because, oh well, Richmond will never run out of Asians.