FamilyMart’s Plan to Turn Checkouts into Ad Screens

FamilyMart is betting that data, not sandwiches, will drive its next wave of growth. Its “FM²” strategy fuses a saturated store network with “FamilyMedia Vision” (FMV), a data-rich layer built on 30 million registered FamiPay users and 55 million registered Life-Live IDs, covering well over half of Japan’s adults. By mining this daily purchasing data, the chain aims to sell precisely targeted ads on apps and in-store screens, pushing “self-care” goods to bath-salt lovers or electric vehicles to urban commuters. Advertising revenue is expected to quadruple to about 40 billion JPY by 2030. Convenience stores, once mere last-mile retailers, are being recast as attention brokers.