President Chain Store Corporation (統一超商) owns over 4,000 of 7-11 outlets located all over Taiwan, and various complimentary services supporting their online and offline retail.
Imagine what you can do when you walk in to their 7-11s...
- You can buy instant food on the shelves.
- Buy rail tickets via their self-service "ibon" kiosk, paying using prepaid card "icash".
- Collect and pay for books ordered from books.com.tw.
- Collect and pay for items won via the auction sites.
- View their catalog book and make order.
It's also a step forward for the convenience store owner as the sales has reach the bottleneck level, there isn't much room to grow mainly due to market saturation and the limitation of shelf space.
In Taiwan, they have basically build a virtual 1st floor on top of the 7-11s! You can order via the extensive web catalog, via their multimedia kiosk "ibon", or pre-order via their catalog book in store.
On top of that, they have fantastic 24-hours delivery services. So, huge product variety + speed = products on the cloud! That means a huge selection of products are sort of "on-demand" via the 7-11s.
In the following episodes, we will look into the key components supporting this super store on the cloud - storefronts, logistics and payment.
