Besides large expenditures on new store openings, fierce competition from domestic home appliance retailer Suning Appliance Co has further increased Gome's losses, he said. "Suning surpassed Gome in sales in 2009, and it won't be easy for Gome to win back its position in this sector."
Suning earned a net profit of 2.4 billion yuan for the nine months through September in 2012 and operates 30 stores in the Hong Kong market.
Suning told the Global Times Monday that their sales in Hong Kong were likely to grow some 200 percent year-on-year in 2012 and it planned to open another four or five new stores in Hong Kong in 2013.
However, both Suning and Gome are likely to shut down many offline stores and focus full efforts on the development of their e-commerce operations in 2013, giving that the Internet has become domestic consumers' favorite place to shop for home appliances, noted Liu.
"I often find the products I need in offline shops and purchase them at a lower price online," a Beijing resident, surnamed Yi, told the Global Times Monday.
The latest data from iResearch showed that in the third quarter of 2012, suning.com accounted for 9.9 percent of the total sales volume created by domestic B2C e-commerce retailers, ranking second after 360buy.com's 51.1 percent. Gome's acquired online platform coo8.com ranked fourth with 5 percent while its self-established gome.com.cn held less than 2 percent.
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