The South Korean supermarket giant and department store retailer Lotte Group has revealed a new strategy for the Chinese market, accelerating its expansion in China and announcing it will open its first Chinese single ownership store in Tianjin in 2011.The new Lotte department store in Tianjin will be located at Renheng Square, with a store area of 50,000 square metres.
Lotte said it plans to develop more stores in China and has selected several target cities, including Shanghai, Chengdu, Suzhou, Dalian, and Qingdao. By 2018, Lotte will have at least 20 department stores besides hundreds of supermarkets in China.
Lotte Shopping’s net profit grew 15% to KRW452.2bn ($381.8m) in the last year mostly thanks to its continual operating profit margin improvement, while benefiting from its exposure to the Chinese market, according to analysts at Goldman Sachs.
Lotte Shopping bought Chinese supermarket operator Times Ltd. for around US$630m and 63.2% of China’s home-shopping channel LuckyPai for $130m earlier this year.
