GS25 Wonsoju and CU Yonsei Cream Bread Popular
High Scarcity Leads to 'Open Run' Queues
[Asia Economy Reporter Heo Midam] As competition among convenience stores intensifies recently, each convenience store is launching exclusive products to capture consumers' hearts. Instead of products available everywhere, they are introducing differentiated products sold only on their own platforms as a strategy to attract customers. Among these, some popular products have become so scarce that customers have to participate in so-called 'open runs'?rushing to the store at opening time?to purchase them.
Recently, private brand (PB) products from convenience stores have become very popular. CU convenience store launched the Yonsei Cream Bread series (milk, red bean, chocolate) in January, breaking all previous dessert sales records. This bread is characterized by its generous cream and moist texture. Since its release, the series has swept the top three spots in CU's dessert category sales rankings, and recently, cumulative sales have surpassed 6 million units. It continues to attract popularity nationwide, with open runs occurring in many locations.
Meanwhile, GS25 convenience store has been exclusively distributing 'One Soju Spirit' since the 12th of last month. This product is a distilled soju released as a follow-up to 'One Soju' by One Spirits, an alcoholic beverage company founded by singer Park Jaebeom. Priced at 12,900 KRW per bottle, it is more expensive than regular soju, but it gained great popularity by selling out the initial stock of 200,000 bottles within a week of release. As supply could not keep up with demand at the time, there were increasing cases where even open runs could not secure the product, leading to consumer dissatisfaction.
A few years ago, open run phenomena mainly occurred with high-priced products such as luxury goods. However, recently, such phenomena have become common even with low-priced products. A representative example that caused a convenience store open run frenzy is 'Pokemon Bread.' SPC Samlip re-released Pokemon Bread in February after 16 years. Along with the craze for collecting 'Tibutibu seals (stickers),' Pokemon Bread caused a nationwide shortage. Consequently, open runs waiting in front of convenience stores for bread restocks became frequent, and some even made reservations to purchase the bread.
The generation leading the open run trend is mainly the MZ generation (Millennials + Generation Z). Being sensitive to trends, the MZ generation has a strong desire to purchase products with fun and rarity, even if it means enduring long waiting times. They also express their individuality by sharing the hard-to-get products on social networking services (SNS).
Professor Eunhee Lee of Inha University's Department of Consumer Studies said, "The MZ generation spends more time online compared to other age groups. Therefore, they have strong curiosity about products that become popular online and want to see for themselves why the products are popular. Also, when they obtain the desired product through an open run, their satisfaction is high. They gain a sense of accomplishment by boasting about it on SNS."
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