Hypermarkets report record sales

Statistics compiled by the hypermarkets showed that Carrefour raked in NT$600 million in total sales revenues, RT-Mart NT$450 million and Geant over NT$300 million, all hitting new highs. Tsann Kuen, a leading 3C retail chain, also posted a record daily turnover of over NT$450 million.

Hectic buying sprees erupted islandwide, as local consumers swarmed retail outlets, including hypermarkets, 3C retail outlets, department stores, supermarkets and traditional retail markets, to spend generously using the vouchers designed by the government to stimulate domestic spending to give the sagging economy a shot in the arm.

Cashiers at hypermarkets were busy collecting vouchers given by consumers. Kuo Chien-nan, a hypermarket manager, said that “our staffers have kept settling bills for consumers, and all our cashier machines have been all operational, but consumers till have to stand in long lines waiting for making payment for their purchases.”

Ho Mo-chen, another hypermarket manager, noted that “the number of consumers coming to our market is more than double the usual time, and our daily revenue hits a historical high.”

Favorite goods for consumers include small household electrical appliance, clothing, LCD TVs, audio & video equipment, computers and other 3C products.

Wii machines are quite popular with school children. Tsann Kuen chain stores sold more than 1,000 such machines on Sunday alone, as many children chose to purchase the machines using their vouchers, making the 3C retail chain suffer a supply shortfall.

Department stores also benefited greatly from the issuance of the shopping vouchers. All the major department stores such as Pacific Sogo Department Store, and Shin-Kong Mitsukoshi Department Store reported receiving over 10,000 vouchers from consumers on Sunday alone, significantly pushing up their sales revenues.

In related news, Chen Tain-jy, minister of the Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) and mastermind of the voucher project, uttered a sigh of relief over the shopping spree, as the CEPD was originally worried about the effect of the project in stimulating consumption and economy, in view of the lackluster outcome of a similar project in Japan.

Chen is optimistic about the continuing effect of the project and attributed the satisfactory outcome to a number of factors, including shopping voucher-related preferential packages put forward by retailers, the expanded scope of stores accepting the coupons, and the large denomination of the coupon (NT$500) which helps magnify the consumption effect.

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