FairPrice group aims to become part of platform company, 50 years after founding: new book

UNION cooperative FairPrice Group hopes its customer data can aid the creation of a platform company comprising NTUC Enterprise’s cooperatives, reveals a new book commemorating the supermarket chain’s 50th anniversary.

To that end, a single user ID called Linkpass is being introduced to connect different parts of the NTUC Enterprise ecosystem of cooperatives, including NTUC Health and Learning Hub.

The platform model, which involves facilitating interactions across many participants, is favoured by many of the world’s largest companies, such as Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Tencent.

To achieve this platform ambition, NTUC Enterprise is banking on data from over one million consumers that use the FairPrice app, as well as its “treasure trove of data” from having brought loyalty programme Link Rewards under the FairPrice Group in 2019.

Its foray into the digital bank arena through Trust Bank is its “latest iteration” in pursuit of this.

“We can stitch together a far more complete 360-degree view of the individual,” FairPrice Group’s chief customer and marketing officer Alvin Neo disclosed in the book The Price of Being Fair.

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Former National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) secretary-general Lim Swee Say said that while tech giants collect data to monetise it, NTUC does so “for a different reason”. Said Lim: “We want to do more good by serving them better and providing them with more benefits.”

For example, by tracking customers who buy diapers, NTUC can tell how many of its members are young families, said Lim. The labour movement can then work with its cooperatives, including FairPrice and preschool operator First Campus, to “come up with more ways to support” them.

The new book, which goes on sale on Jul 10, was commissioned by FairPrice Group to chart its journey from being set up as a cooperative in 1973, to becoming Singapore’s largest supermarket chain and food enterprise with a turnover of S$4.3 billion.

In it, past and present leaders share anecdotes of painful decisions made and challenges overcome, from pulling out of fruitless overseas ventures to fending off some of the world’s largest supermarket chains that were planning to usurp FairPrice’s market share.

Yet, half a century after its founding, the conditions that birthed the supermarket chain may be surprisingly familiar to today’s consumers: as a cooperative, its goal was to help moderate the rapidly rising costs of living in the 1970s by offering daily essentials at a reasonable price.

“Even as we took a step back in time to interview our key leaders for the book, it was clear that their determination and belief in our mission to moderate the cost of living carried us through,” said FairPrice group chief executive Vipul Chawla. “The FairPrice Group story is a reminder of the transformative power of business coupled with clarity of purpose resulting in meaningful change.”

The book will be officially presented to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Jul 22, at FairPrice Group’s 50th anniversary celebration at Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre.

Edited by former journalists Sue-Ann Chia and Peh Shing Huei, The Price of Being Fair features five other writers with journalistic backgrounds.

“While global organisations like Nike, Starbucks and Amazon have had their success stories well documented, our local brands have been reticent and shy,” said Chia.