Tiếng Việt
中文 (Chinese)
한국어
Business premises are one of the most important factors in developing a store’s business. According to many experts, when asked about the most important factor in developing a successful store, the answer is: Location, location, and location. This shows the importance of business premises.
With many years of experience in opening sales points for foreign retail chains in Vietnam, I would like to share some small tips to help you choose a good sales point to avoid unnecessary mistakes.
1. Visibility
The visibility factor is simply understood as the ability of customers to recognize your store from a distance (signboard). You can stand 50m, 100m, 150m away from the premises to see if you can see your store’s signboard. In addition to helping customers identify the store, a beautiful location helps your store increase its recognition, helping many potential customers in the future know about your brand and store. You can understand it simply like this: On your way to work, you see a store in a beautiful location and you see it every day because it’s so prominent. This makes you curious and it’s very likely that you will go online to find out what brand it is, where it comes from, and what it sells… and what will come will come on a beautiful day, you will visit that store and buy its products. It’s like a seed planted in your mind about the brand you see every day. Now, when you see yellow and black, you’ll immediately think of The Gioi Di Dong, brown and red, you’ll immediately remember Highland Coffee, green, you’ll immediately remember Starbucks.
2. Accessibility
– Parking lot: Is there a spacious parking lot at the sales point for customers to park? This factor is very important, especially for stores where customers stay, such as cafes and restaurants. So, if you’re opening a cafe, you should pay attention to the parking lot!
– Sidewalk: Is the sidewalk leading to the store too high? If it’s too high and difficult to access, it will make customers feel scared when driving into the store, especially female customers who are very afraid of this. Even though it’s a small factor, it will prevent your customers from entering the store because they are afraid of falling when driving onto the sidewalk into the store.
– One-way street: If your store is on a one-way street, your potential customer base will be significantly reduced because customers will be reluctant to buy due to the hassle of turning around or because the traffic is too heavy and will carry them along with the moving traffic.- Median strip in front of the store: Having a median strip right in front of the store is similar to a one-way street, making it easy for customers to drive past without noticing the store (traffic tends to move faster on roads with median strips or one-way streets). Once customers have passed, they will be very reluctant to turn back. Therefore, if you plan to open a store on a road with a median strip, you should place it near a U-turn spot for your customers’ convenience.
– Located at intersections with frequent traffic jams: Locations at the intersection of small, narrow roads, four-way intersections, etc., where a large number of people frequently pass, often cause congestion. In these areas, customers are very hesitant to visit because of traffic jams and difficulty stopping to eat or rest. In Saigon, you can see intersections like Truong Chinh-Au Co, Truong Chinh-Tan Ky Tan Quy….
3. Focus
In business, the old saying goes, “Business has friends, sales have neighborhoods.” This saying means that when doing business, you must choose a sales point where your customers frequent. You need to find out if your product is suitable for that area. Are they willing to pay the price you offer for your product? And do they use your product regularly? Let me give you an example to make it easier to understand: If you open an office lunch restaurant, the first thing you need to answer is whether the area you plan to open in has a lot of office workers. Is their spending level high? I will elaborate on this in the next section. And do they eat every day? Another example to help you understand why convenience stores often concentrate near schools, universities, hospitals, etc., is because their customers are there. Therefore, for those who intend to open a chain of stores, you should establish a customer criterion for your business and always ask yourself: “Where are your customers?”
4. Income
The price customers are willing to pay you depends on the income of customers in the area where you open your store. As you know, a cup of coffee in District 12 costs 15-20k, but when you go to the center of District 1, you have to pay a higher price, 30-50% more than a cup of coffee in District 12, depending on the cafe model. Therefore, understanding the living standards and income of your potential customers is very important to help you set an appropriate selling price. A simple way to help you assess the basic living standards and income of people in the area where you plan to open a store is to survey surrounding stores; you can check their menus to know the selling prices of stores in the area.
In addition, for a deeper survey, a specialized team is needed to conduct on-site surveys and use statistical data from market research units.
5. Traffic flow
This point may be a small part of the Focus section, but I find it very important, so I have separated it to explain it more clearly. Your customers may be concentrated in one area, but understanding the direction they frequently travel will help you choose the right location, which will help you attract customers. It’s like setting a basket to catch fish, but if they swim in one direction and you set the basket in another, you will never catch any fish because they don’t swim in that direction. Another example to help you understand better is that at school gates, there are always main gates and side gates. The main gate always has a large number of students passing through, so you often see chain brands always placing their stores next to or opposite the main gate.
In conclusion, to help you remember and use the 5 criteria for choosing a successful sales location, I have created and named it the sales location formula: 4T1H, which are the first letters of the criteria. And one more thing, you can create a scoring scale for the above factors, for example, a scale like this: 5: Excellent, 4: Good, 3: Fair, 2: Average, 1: Poor. This will help you evaluate a sales location quickly, even for newcomers, to choose a suitable location. However, choosing a successful sales location is a process of practical experience and a combination of many factors, including: location, product, and service of the business. Therefore, you need to carefully analyze the above factors to make an accurate decision to avoid mistakes, and I often jokingly tell my colleagues in the industry that “Finding a location is like catching a bus; if you miss this one, you wait for the next one.” I wish you success in choosing sales locations and expanding your chain.
Saigon 3/9/2020
Phan Anh Minh – BDM Vietnam
Photo: Internet Source
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