Ministry of Commerce outlines the future of pedestrian streets: encouraging the pop-up store format

People’s Daily Online, Beijing, August 25 (Zhao Zhuqing). On the 24th, the Ministry of Commerce publicly solicited comments on the “Work Guidelines for High-Quality Development of Pedestrian Streets (Draft for Comments).” The draft proposes several directions for optimizing business formats, including smart stores, pop-up stores and unmanned stores, and encourages innovation in formats.

For example, to meet consumption upgrades, it encourages more experiential formats such as leisure and entertainment, parent-child experiences, lifestyle services, cultural-creative art and cultural performances, and hosting novel, highly participatory events to attract younger consumers and meet emerging demand.

It specifically mentions using modern IT to develop unmanned convenience stores, unmanned restaurants, pop-up stores, 3D fitting rooms and other retail formats, leading new formats and making consumption more convenient and experiential for residents and tourists.

On big data and new tech, the draft encourages major merchants on the street to build smart stores and enrich smart consumption scenes; explore unmanned supermarkets, stores and restaurants to create unmanned tech application scenes and deliver 24-hour self-service, contactless convenience shopping.

It also encourages pedestrian streets to work with major merchants, lawfully using footfall and consumption data with AI and big-data models to analyze overall consumption traits and structure, forecast trends, and support street operations as well as merchant data exchange, merchandise marketing and event planning.