SHANGHAI – Given the growing trend of having smaller stores in the retail industry, France's Carrefour, the world's second-largest hypermarket group by sales, now plans to open an Easy Carrefour convenience store in China, nearly two decades after it first began operating in the country, according to a report by the Shanghai-based National Business Daily.

The new Easy Carrefour shop will reportedly occupy nearly 300 square meters, three times the usual size of a convenience store. Industry experts say that the move can be seen as part of the hypermarket group's efforts to diversify its business in China. This move puts the company into the convenience chain store sector, which is seeing double-digit growth, but is also already crowded with competitors in many first-tier cities.

Meanwhile, industry experts predicted the advent of the era of small-format stores due to the impact of the e-commerce sector. Carrefour's move is aimed in response to the trend. For Carrefour, it is a good time to enter the convenience store business as customers are attaching greater importance to convenience.

Since the hypermarket model has failed to work in China, retailers are looking for new business segments for growth and smaller-format stores provide a good choice, given these stores' low rental costs, investment and operating costs, and the more customized services they offer compared with hypermarkets.