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According to my current working position as seafood procurement agent, I personally have the closer connection with upper-stream suppliers compare to other seafood booth operator.
Thus I can use my resources help me getting the products without being ripped off by what so called upper suppliers. Food industry is basically the business of how to reach the upper stream producer. Whoever has the connections to reach the upmost stream, the operation cost will also be minimized according to the level you reach. It is also why our booth can obtain certain special products like season limited shrimps or value added products through our supplier channels. This difference of supplier chain does not only minimize our cost, but also increase the diversification of the products we can offer compared to other booth operator. For the outside competitors like super/hypermarket, the cost of operating the booth in traditional market is definitely much lower. First of all, it is free charge of income tax according to government regulation. Therefore booth retailers do not have to provide receipts while doing the business in traditional market. It is the policy that government posted to protect the growth of the local food retail business and it can provide at least 5% of the space on pricing for booth operators compare to outside competitors. Secondly, the rental fees on booth also enjoy the benefits from government’s patronage on market space.
The rental fee of the booth is based on the land scale your booth occupies. But most of the
Farmer/Fishery
Upper Supplier Upper Supplier
Distributor
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End User
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traditional market is public owned association, therefore the rental fees is considered very cheap compared to real market price. In average, a monthly rental fees for a booth cost around NTD$ 3,000~5,000 dollars in traditional market and this gives seafood booth another advantage on operation cost. Not only the rental fees, actually every traditional market in Taiwan enjoys the discount on price of hydro and electricity due to government policy.
However, these fees are very stable and would not adjust unless there is change on the government’s patronage policy. Therefore overall cost on running the booth in traditional market is very cost competitive. Third, Government has hosted a lot of funding programs on development of the hardware in traditional markets in recent years. These funding improve the environment of the market and its surrounding areas in order to increase the competiveness of the traditional market against the large retail corporations. For example, Taipei government has distributed the capitals for more than 5 billion dollars on expansion of the parking spaces near 10 largest traditional markets in 2009. These policies slowly change the impression of what people think of traditional markets in old days. Last but not the least, the location of the traditional markets is mostly at center of the community or place with high flow of passengers. Therefore the booths in the market can enjoy a stable flow of the visitors without any extra fees.
3-3-4) Development of the unique culture and style
There will also be varieties of marketing or promotion strategies we could use to stimulate the sales and increase the consumers’ interests.
# Strategy Examples/explanation
1 Combination with local specialty/resource
Bei-Tou market can cooperate with local Hot Spring+Hotels to hold “Hot Spring Festival”
2 Cooperation with Government’s
program/event 2010 Taipei’s Festival of Traditional Market 3 Management of the personal
“Booth” Brand
1) Design of the Logo 2). Design of the Slogan
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1. Combination with local specialty and tourism resource
Our model for booth operation is on Bei-Tou traditional market. The reason we choose Bei-Tou market is not only for its high consumers flow like previously mentioned, another main reason is due to its rich resources on tourism like hot spring、historical bathhouse(傳統 澡堂) 、gorgeous clusters of hotels and beautiful scenic sights like path of sakura(櫻花步道) during spring and summer. However, the tourism resource of Bei-Tou will have to be addressed before cut into strategy of combining the traditional market with local resource.
Taipei government had put tourism as one of the key development on future green economical development. As idea for environmental protection is increasingly being aware by mass public, every government aims to develop clean economy with lesser degree of pollution. That’s why tourism is being marked as key policy for economic development.
Bei-Tou is famous for its antique hot spring culture and natural scenic sights like Guan-Du natural park、Yang-Ming Mountain etc. These resources give Bei-Tou the strong backup to attract tourists come and incurs the consumption. Below is the statistical data on tourists flow for four largest tourism spots in Bei-Tou: Guandu natural park、Bei-Tou hot spring museum、Katagalan culture museum and Yang-Ming Mountain National Park.
1) Guandu natural park(關 渡 自 然 公 園 )
2) Bei-Tou hot spring museum(北投溫泉博物館) Numbers
of tourists 95,272 108,125 96,771 114,542 107,284 521,994
years 95 96 97 98 99 95~99
Numbers
of tourists 181,581 149,385 189,302 291,296 281,647 1,093,211
years 95 96 97 98 99 95~99
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3) Katagalan culture museum(凱 達 格 蘭 文 化 館 )
4) Yang-Ming Mountain National Park(陽明山國家公園)
From the above statistical data, we can see that even the numbers of visitors might fluctuate according to different year, but overall number for visitors is increasing in each tourism spot.
These tourists can provide our booths and traditional market another source for consumption if we can implement a complete tourism program or package which can combine both the tourism resources and local foods/culture. Most of the booth operators in traditional market currently still focus on doing the business of retail. As time changes, sales is not only about quality of the products and competiveness of the price anymore. Marketing and package of the products/service is another main tactics retailers have to be aware in order to differentiate with other competitors. Since Bei-Tou has absolute advantage on location (like previously examined) in Greater Taipei region and plentiful tourism resource, booth operators in Bei-Tou can cooperate together and form an association of Bei-Tou Traditional market which not only manage the business and maintenance of the order, but also implement the program or festival in order to combine all the resource like previously mentioned to attract more consumption from the visitors. This kind of activity can only be successful by cooperation between local government and local business. This strategy aims at greater scope of profits by expanding the business of traditional market to combine with local tourism, thus lead-time preparation and plan will have to be detail and it might take certain period of time.
However, if this strategy can successfully connect the local food/culture of traditional market Numbers
of tourists 76,295 261,258 187,045 116,494 161,648 802,740
years 95 96 97 98 99 95~99
Numbers
of tourists 2,231,000 2,2196,000 1,751,000 2,006,000 1,813,600 10,021,200
years 95 96 97 98 99 95~99
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with tourism, the development can expand from retail business to greater regional tourism business.
2) Cooperation with Government’s program/event
Taiwan Government has been aware of the importance of traditional market in recent years, therefore they had hosted the event of “Traditional Market Festival”(http://www.2010market.com.tw/show3.html) each year in order to encourage more visits of the customers to traditional market. Our booth can also use this kind of opportunity to improve the visibility and popularity. Beside the government’s event, there is also the interflow of experience between traditional markets which is hosted by Taipei City Market Administration Office every few months. Our booth can also use these chances to learn and inspect from each others work. Under some circumstances, we can also alliance with other booths that has similar ideas with us and integrate the procurement quantity on some of the products together in order to minimize the cost of products. The information flow on new products can also be exchanged with increase frequency on exchange of the experience between booths. However, efficiently use of the resource government provides is another main strategy our booth can manipulate in order to increase booth’s strength.
3) Management of the personal “Booth” Brand
Brand management is another strategy we will apply on the management of the booth business. It can also be seemed as another type of differentiation. Most of the booth operators in traditional market do not have the ideas of creating its own brand or specialty.
So we will design our logo and shop sign at the booth in order to enhance the awareness of the booth. Despite the logo and shop sign, every time our customers bring its own bag to carry the products they bought from us, there will be 2 dollars deduction as encouragement of environmental protection. For the package materials our booth offers, it will also focus on
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materials that is friendly to environment and recyclable in order to incur more responses from customers who has same kinds of attitudes like us. The logo will also be printed on the package materials in order to do the advertisement for the booth. Last but not the least, there will be a slogan and theme being put on all our media or advertisement campaign in order to express the culture and ideas of the booth. The slogan will be “eating with healthy and tasty seafood can coexist with saving the planet earth.” This slogan perfectly shows the spirit of our booth and intends to make difference with other booths in traditional market.
However, the intention of the slogan is to attract the interest of younger generations and make them understand that buying seafood in traditional market can also be environmental protection and fit the main social stream.