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Japan March Supermarket Sales: 15th Consecutive Month Down

April 29, 2007
By Ken Worsley


Japan’s supermarket sales have now dropped for 36 of the past 37 months. Last week, the Japan Chain Stores Association announced that in March, sales at supermarkets open for at least one year declined 1.5% nationwide. According to the report, the figures are based on the combined sales of 83 supermarket chains which together run 8,786 outlets. When new stores are included, revenue rose 0.4 pct from a year earlier.

In terms of yearly totals, sales declined 0.9% at the nation’s supermarkets. When the figures are adjusted on a store-to-store basis, sales fell 2.6% in fiscal 2006.

Broken down by category, March 2007 supermarket sales looked like this:

  • Food: +0.5%, 61.1% of total revenue
  • Household Products: -3.4%, 19.7% of total revenue
  • Clothing: -5.4%, 12.2% of total revenue
  • Miscellaneous Items: -1.5%, 6.5% of total revenue
  • Services: -47.7%, 0.4% of total revenue

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Comments

4 Responses to “Japan March Supermarket Sales: 15th Consecutive Month Down”

  1. Pellegrini on April 30th, 2007 1:50 am

    What services do supermarkets offer? Are they talking
    about credit cards?

  2. Ken Worsley on April 30th, 2007 5:44 am

    I’m not sure…credit cards might make sense if they were formerly Ito Yokado and now 7-11 but for some reason are no longer reported in the sales figures, though I doubt that. As a category, ’services’ is down 40-50% every month, it seems. I’m wondering if some of them might have charged for deliver in the past but have since made it free, to compete with 7-11, who will deliver for free.

  3. John S on May 2nd, 2007 2:26 am

    Maybe they’re supposed to have “Services” in quotes.

  4. Japan’s April Supermarket Sales: Down 1.0% for 16th Consecutive Month : Japan Economy News & Blog on December 2nd, 2007 10:35 pm

    […] Sales have dropped in 27 of the past 38 months. In March, sales at Japan’s supermarkets were down 1.5 percent. […]

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