(Yicai Global) Jan. 19 -- German retail giant Metro AG, also known as Metro Group, opened another store in Shanghai only one day after unveiling its fourth store in Beijing. These two new stores signal the beginning of Metro's new business strategy for 2018.

The new Metro Select Hongkou Jiangwan store located in Greenland Binfen Plaza in Shanghai occupies an area of nearly 2,500 square meters, much smaller than the group's usual 10,000-square meter department stores. The new branch will mainly sell food products. It is what the company calls a compact Metro store.

The firm sed to feature large department stores as its main business model. However, with changes in the market and rise of community business, it found that medium- and small-sized stores which occupy a smaller area and concentrate on products to meet residents' daily demands such as fresh food and fruits have more business prospects, the company said in a statement.

Metro also intends to experiment with online and offline retail convergence. It has set up an online version of Hongkou Jiangwan store to sell its products through e-commerce. Customers can log on to the website and select the store to buy products, it said.  Metro is one of the first global retailers to enter China in the 1990s when the country's retail market opened to foreign firms.