Supermarket Management Information System Development and

Current Situation: A Comparative Analysis of Large and Small and

Medium-Sized Supermarkets

Haoran Zhou

College Information Science and Engineering, Wuchang Shouyi University, Wuhan, China

Keywords: Management Information System, Database, Operation Management, Supermarkets.

Abstract: With the development of technology, management information systems are gradually gaining popularity and

development, providing a new and more efficient option for managers in government or business, etc. With

the increasing degree of informatization, information management systems have become an indispensable

and essential part of modern organizations, by studying the management information systems of supermarkets

of different scale and analyzing them comparatively. This paper concludes that the emergence of information

management systems has replaced supermarkets' traditional manual management methods. It greatly

facilitates the management and improves the operational efficiency of supermarkets. At the same time, for

different scale of supermarkets, the problems faced are very different. Supermarkets suffer from poor

collection efficiency, and small and medium-sized supermarkets are negligent in operation and management.

Therefore, the relevant personnel need to continue to develop and improve the information management

system, overcome security and efficiency problems, promote innovation and sustainable development, and

achieve the goal of improving overall competitiveness and sustainable development.

1 INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, supermarkets, as an essential part of the

retail industry, have become an indispensable part of

people's daily lives. With the development of society,

the scale of supermarkets continues to develop while

also facing growing competitive pressure and

changing customer needs. Traditional management

methods have been unable to meet the rapid

development of business needs. Therefore, it is

necessary to use modern information technology to

improve the management efficiency and service level

of supermarkets. The database as the core of the

management information system (MIS) can be a good

solution to this problem. Through rational design and

management of the database, the efficiency,

flexibility and reliability of the information

management system can be improved, so as to better

manage and utilize resources and meet the

information management needs of the organization.

Some large supermarkets may already have a

thorough MIS, but it is not applicable to small and

medium-sized supermarkets. In the face of the rise of

https://orcid.org/0009-0006-7725-2339

small and medium-sized supermarkets, the problems

of large supermarkets in terms of distance and crowd

management have been exposed. People choose to

shop in small and medium-sized supermarkets near

their homes or neighborhoods to reduce the distance

and queuing time. The location of large supermarkets

is fixed, generally in commercial areas and relatively

far from residential areas, which gives small and

medium-sized supermarkets a good living space.

However, some small and medium-sized

supermarkets have not invested enough resources in

the construction of MIS, which has led to problems in

staff management, product pricing and purchasing

decisions. Mao Yongbo pointed out that although

small and medium-sized supermarkets have natural

geographic advantages, there is still a large gap in the

overall level of capital, business model and import

and export of goods decision-making (Mao, 2019).

Compared with the systematic and complete

information management system of large

supermarkets, small and medium-sized supermarkets

are lacking and need a suitable MIS as a way to adapt

Zhou, H.

Supermarket Management Information System Development and Current Situation: A Comparative Analysis of Large and Small and Medium-Sized Supermarkets.

DOI: 10.5220/0012956300004508

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Engineering Management, Information Technology and Intelligence (EMITI 2024), pages 479-484

ISBN: 978-989-758-713-9

479

to the fierce competition in the market. Taipalus

found that the database can make it more convenient

for information managers to obtain and utilize the

data, facilitate the access of different levels of

employees to the required data, and realize the

sharing and integration of data, which greatly

improves information management quality and

efficiency (Taipalus, 2023). In general, large

supermarkets and small and medium-sized

supermarkets each face different management

challenges. MIS, as a universal solution, can be

personalized for supermarkets of different scales.

Therefore, all these supermarkets need more

advanced and appropriate management systems to

improve their management efficiency, accurately

collect useful information, and effectively utilize the

resources at hand to achieve a high level of operation

and service quality.

The efficiency and security of MIS are closely

related to databases. A good database design can

greatly facilitate the manager's operation of the

enterprise and provide services to customers.

Therefore. This paper takes supermarkets as the

object of analysis, aiming to explore the development

of MIS and its importance in the field of supermarkets.

Introduce the concept and development overview of

an information management system. In-depth

analysis of the development trend and current

situation of supermarket MIS, comparing the

advantages and disadvantages of large supermarkets

and small and medium-sized supermarkets, analyzing

and explaining the problems faced by each. Provide a

more suitable and efficient information management

solution direction for supermarket business. At the

same time, this paper will discuss the impact of the

development of MIS on supermarket operations, as

well as optimize the database design to enhance the

effectiveness of supermarket management and

alleviate security issues.

2 DEVELOPMENTS AND

CHALLENGES IN

MANAGEMENT

INFORMATION SYSTEMS

MIS was first proposed by Prof. Gordon B. Davis in

the 1860s (Guo, 2005). He emphasized that

management information systems are composed of

computer hardware and software as well as database

technology. Since then, MIS has gone through several

stages of evolution following the times. From

Luenendonk's point of view, he categorized the

evolution process into five stages (Luenendonk,

2017).

The first phase was the Mainframe and

Minicomputers era, which covered the mid-20th

century through the late 1970s. The main computing

power in this era came from mainframes and

minicomputers, which were not yet widely available

but were usually centralized in large data centers. The

main task of the systems at this time was to process

large amounts of transactions and data efficiently and

to ensure the stability and reliability of the system.

Then came the era of Personal Computers. The

1980s was the period of the rise of the personal

computer. The popularization of PCs brought

computing power to the desk of the individual user.

This led to increased efficiency and productivity. MIS

began to open up to individual users in this era,

becoming an important tool for individuals and small

teams to manage and process information.

The 1990s belonged to networking and distributed

computing. Management Information technology

thus evolved to the Client/Server Networks stage.

This is when MIS began to adopt a client/server

architecture, allowing users to access applications and

data on servers over the network. This architecture

allowed users to share information and resources,

achieve collaborative work, and improve

organizational efficiency and flexibility.

The fourth era is the era of Enterprise Computing.

At the beginning of the 21st century, with the

expansion of enterprise scale and the complexity of

business, MIS gradually develops into an integrated

solution to support various departments and business

processes of enterprises. The system's main task is to

integrate and optimize the enterprise's information

resources and business processes to improve its

operational efficiency and competitiveness.

Then, there is the present era of Cloud Computing.

Through cloud computing technology, MIS can

provide computing resources and services through the

Internet, and users can flexibly access and use these

resources and services according to the demand

without investing a lot of money and time to establish

and maintain their own MIS. This model can greatly

reduce the IT costs of enterprises and improve the

flexibility and scalability of information

management.

As MIS evolves in different eras, the issue of data

security is becoming more and more prominent. With

the increasing size of MIS, the growing volume of

data, and more and more critical data being recorded

in it, data security has become an important issue for

MIS. Data security is important in protecting personal

privacy, preventing leakage of confidential

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information, and maintaining business continuity.

Among them, data leakage may lead to personal

identity theft, financial loss, and even legal liability.

In addition, data tampering or destruction may lead to

business interruption, impaired credit and other

problems. Therefore, MIS must take effective

measures to ensure the confidentiality of data.

However, in addition to data security, people are

faced with the challenge of how to manage and

cleanse data efficiently. A large amount of redundant

and outdated data may affect the performance and

efficiency of the system and increase the cost of data

management and maintenance. Moreover, the

performance and responsiveness of the MIS directly

affect the user experience and work efficiency. This

requires us to optimize the database so as to organize

and store data more effectively.

3 IMPACT OF MANAGEMENT

INFORMATION SYSTEMS ON

SUPERMARKETS

In the former environment of single commodity and

non-intense competition, the amount of data is

compatible with the traditional manual management

mode. Today's supermarkets face fierce competition,

gradually tend to diversify the commodities. It also

pays more attention to the aspect of user experience.

The emergence of these phenomena has led to the

explosive growth of information. Such a large amount

of data is no longer suitable for using the previous

manual management mode (Liu, 2020). Traditional

management methods are inefficient for business

processes such as account registration and product

information updating and have limited ability to

handle concurrency (Zhuang, 2022). It will also be

very difficult to maintain and update the information

in the future. In the end, this will lead to the

management not being able to accurately grasp the

operation of the supermarket and the proportion of

income and expenditure in a certain period of time.

All these problems seriously limit the development of

supermarkets.

The emergence of MIS has improved the

efficiency of supermarket operations. Computerized

management information systems can help

supermarkets realize the automatic collection,

analysis and processing of sales data, which greatly

improves work efficiency and also saves a lot of

manual management costs. Through automated

inventory management, sales and purchase systems,

and sales data analysis, supermarkets are able to more

efficiently manage merchandise inventory and

optimize purchasing plans and sales strategies, thus

improving operational efficiency and profit levels.

MIS can achieve real-time updating and accurate

recording of data, avoiding the problems of human

error and inconsistent information. Supermarkets can

more accurately track the inventory of goods, sales

and supply chain information, ensuring the

timeliness, accuracy and consistency of information

and reducing errors and risks.

With the statistical information from the system,

supermarket brands can visualize the management of

different local supermarkets throughout the system

and promote the overall management of the brand.

The system can collect, integrate and display the sales

data, inventory, customer information and other

information of the supermarkets in different places,

helping the managers to understand the operation

status and characteristics of the supermarkets in

different places more intuitively. It can also help

supermarket brands to decide where to open new

branches next time. At the same time, it can analyze

the customer consumption time data collected to help

the management understand the flow of customers

and sales in different time periods. Based on these

data, the brand can flexibly adjust the opening hours

of each store according to the actual situation of

different local supermarkets, in order to adapt to the

consumption habits and needs of customers.

In general, a good MIS is very important for

today's supermarkets. With the popularization of

computers and the improvement of their hardware

performance and the development of software

technology, the application areas of computer

management information systems continue to

expand, from the initial sales data management to

inventory management, membership management,

supply chain management and many other aspects.

Thus promoting the development of high quality and

high efficiency of supermarkets.

4 COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF

LARGE AND SMALL AND

MEDIUM-SIZED

SUPERMARKETS

In recent years, a new trend has emerged in the retail

market, with more and more small and medium-sized

supermarkets developing. This phenomenon reflects

the pursuit of shopping convenience by consumers in

the new era, also the challenges and limitations faced

by large supermarkets.

Supermarket Management Information System Development and Current Situation: A Comparative Analysis of Large and Small and

Medium-Sized Supermarkets

481

Compared with the rise of small and medium-

sized supermarkets, large supermarkets are far away

from residential areas, making shopping less

convenient. Especially in the purchase of daily

necessities, large supermarkets are not only large in

size and variety, but also have the problem of long

queues, which makes residents unwilling to spend too

much time and energy to go to large supermarkets.

This is where the advantages of small and medium-

sized supermarkets come into play, as they are usually

very close to residential areas and may even be

located downstairs. The "small but fine" business

model is also a good fit for consumers' immediate

shopping needs.

To solve the problem of long checkout lines in

large supermarkets due to low checkout rates, Gilbert

mentioned in his paper the use of an automated

supermarket self-checkout system based on Radio

Frequency Identification (RFID) (Gilbert, 2021). It is

a wireless communication technology used to identify

and track the information carried on a tag. It usually

consists of two parts: a tag and a reader. The tag is

attached to the item and is used to store and transmit

data. The reader communicates with the tag by

sending a radio signal and reads or writes the data.

This system can improve checkout efficiency and

give customers a better shopping experience (Gilbert,

2021). The system consists of a hardware module, a

database module and two user interface modules. The

hardware module is responsible for reading the

unique identification number of the product tag, the

database module contains the product information

update, and the user interface module interacts with

the cashier and the customer to display the purchase

list and the payment amount (Gilbert, 2021). With

this system, when the customer puts the goods into

the shopping cart, the RFID reader can automatically

read the information on the tag and totalize the price

of the goods in the shopping cart (Gilbert, 2021).

Also, the customer can push the shopping cart to the

self-checkout counter. The system will automatically

read the information of the products in the shopping

cart and generate the bill (Gilbert, 2021).

However, small and medium-sized supermarkets

also have shortcomings in operation. There is a big

gap between small and medium-sized supermarkets

and large supermarkets in terms of the strength of the

overall group, the management model and the

management of goods in and out (Mao, 2019). And

small and medium-sized supermarkets generally do

not invest too much resources and energy in MIS.

Therefore, it has fewer opportunities for trial and

error, and they need a suitable and efficient MIS to

more accurately grasp the business situation and the

development trend of today's commodities. In order

to better adapt to the development and maintain their

own competitiveness. In this research, Tongda

constructed a chain of convenience store MIS based

on B/S architecture by using 'HDFS', data warehouse'

Hive Metastore', and distributed computing

framework 'Spark' (Tong, 2017). This system makes

the management of convenience stores more

systematic and scientific, which is helpful in further

expanding the business scope of convenience stores

and improving the economic benefits of convenience

stores. Finally, it realizes the quickness and efficiency

in the management of convenience stores.

In summary, the retail market is undergoing

tremendous transformation and development in

response to changing consumer needs and continuous

technological advances. The rise of small and

medium-sized supermarkets reminds us that

convenience and personalized service have become

important factors in consumer choice. In future

competition, retailers that balance convenience and

science will better cope with the flexible and

changing market and thus succeed.

5 RECOMMENDATIONS AND

OUTLOOK

In MIS, security and efficiency are of paramount

importance. MIS undertakes the important task of

managing and processing corporate information, so it

is necessary to ensure that information is stored

securely and accessed efficiently. And the efficiency

and security of the MIS are closely related to the

database.

In MIS, security is one of the primary

considerations. With the rapid development of

information technology, enterprises not only need to

protect sensitive data such as customer data and

financial information but also face a variety of

security threats from both internal and external

sources, such as data leakage and hacker attacks. A

series of operations for the database can make up for

the shortcomings in this regard to a certain extent. For

example, the database can be backed up from time to

time and recovery functions can be added. The

database is backed up in full at regular intervals, and

the backup data is stored in different geographic

locations or cloud platforms. In this way, even if the

database has a serious failure or data loss, the

company can quickly recover to the previous state

through the backup data, to ensure business

continuity and reliability. Security threats can also be

prevented by recording and monitoring database

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operation logs. The access and operation of each

employee to the database can be recorded, including

time, operation content and other information. If

abnormal access behavior is detected, system

administrators can take immediate action to ensure

data security and stable system operation. Data

security can also be protected by adding complex

encryption functions. It can be seen that database

technology plays an important role in information

system security (Yuan, 2021).

On the other hand, the efficiency of MIS plays a

key role in the operation and decision-making of

enterprises. An efficient MIS can quickly process

large amounts of data and provide timely and accurate

information support, which can help enterprises

optimize resources and business processes. A good

efficiency improvement can be achieved by

optimizing the database management system

(DBMS) in the system. The performance of a DBMS

depends on the quality of its design and

implementation (Taipalus, 2023). The algorithms,

query statements, etc., of the DBMS can be optimized

to reduce the cost of data access and processing, thus

improving the query performance of the database.

The indexing mechanism provided by the DBMS can

also speed up the data retrieval process. By adding

appropriate indexes to database tables, the number of

data scans can be reduced and the speed of data

retrieval can be increased, especially on large data

sets.

However, with the development of technology in

recent years, integrating AI into MIS has brought

many advantages and benefits. AI not only has good

automated processing and analytical capabilities, but

it is also able to provide customized experiences

based on user behavior and preferences through smart

recommendations and personalized services. Also, AI

is able to make predictions using machine learning

techniques to help organizations make more accurate

and effective decisions. Venkatachalam, in his paper,

mentions that more and more decision support

systems are using AI tools (Venkatachalam, 2020).

These systems are called intelligent machine decision

support systems because they mimic human cognitive

abilities in some way. For example, banks and

insurance companies can use such systems to analyze

large amounts of transaction data and user

information to identify potential fraud. In turn, they

can identify unusual patterns and behaviors to protect

customer assets.

6 CONCLUSIONS

This paper details the development of management

information systems and discusses the importance

and convenience of management information systems

using supermarkets as a case study, leading to a

differentiated comparison between small and

medium-sized supermarkets and large supermarkets.

Finally, the paper puts forward suggestions to address

the maintenance of management information systems

in terms of efficiency and security and looks forward

to the future development of Al-assisted management

information systems.

Research shows that management information

systems have gradually become popular, and their

convenience and flexibility will be pushed to new

heights through cloud computing in the future.

Taking supermarkets as an example. The

management information system greatly improves

the efficiency of supermarket operation, helps the

management to quickly grasp the current market, so

as to provide a better customer service experience.

Due to the different advantage zones, supermarkets

have different sales ecosystems between large and

small and medium-sized, which leads to different

problems.

With the development, the security and efficiency

problems of management information systems have

come to the fore. The security problem can be

prevented by performing a series of backup

encryption operations on the database. Efficiency

issues can also be optimized by optimizing the DBMS

and query statements to improve the efficiency and

quality of the query.

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