The retail current value sales of traditional grocery retailers plunged by a fifth during 2021. During the second half of 2021, a significant number of these outlets were forced to close for a fortnight for cleaning after staff contracted COVID-19.
As consumers looked to shop closer to home during the COVID-19 crisis, local traditional grocery retailers worked to adapt their offer to rapidly changed market conditions by providing more ready meals and frozen food products. Demand for such products grew largely as a result of the dramatic increase in the number of people working from home, who required food for preparation and consumption at home but had limited time for cooking.
The 50-50 co-payment scheme launched by the Thai Government over October-December 2020 helped to fuel the sales of traditional grocery retailers. The government paid half of food, drink and general goods purchases up to THB150 per person per day, capped at THB3,000 per person for the duration of the scheme.
The retail current value sales of traditional grocery retailers will continue to decline during 2022 (albeit at a much more modest pace than in the previous year), before rebounding during subsequent years. However, they will only exceed their pre-pandemic (2019) peak at the very end of the forecast period.
E-commerce is another evolving area of competition, and one that has seen its strength considerably bolstered by the pandemic. The strong development of the delivery capabilities and networks of e-commerce players during the pandemic has made online shopping a viable option across a broad range of product categories for a significantly greater proportion of the Thai population, posing a growing threat to traditional grocery retailers – even beyond major urban centres.
During the forecast period, players in the traditional grocery retailers channel will face growing pressure to create a more distinctive, differentiated offer in order to attract consumers. Moves in this direction are set to include the setting up of vending machines for some products, such as mobile top-up and bill payments, in addition to coin washing machines.
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Traditional grocery retailing is the aggregation of those channels that are invariably non-chained and are, therefore, owned by families and/or run on an individual basis. For Euromonitor traditional grocery retailing is the aggregation of three channels: Independent Small Grocers, Food/Drink/Tobacco Specialists and Other Grocery Retailers. While there can be modern (i.e. chained) food/drink/tobacco specialists or other grocery retailers, due to the store's presence in the channel, these stores are still considered as traditional for Euromonitor International.
See All of Our DefinitionsThis report originates from Passport, our Traditional Grocery Retailers research and analysis database.
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