European Hypermarkets Are Now Selling Used Goods
Hypermarket chains are looking for new ways to attract customers, one of which can be such a simple idea as going into a “garage sales” niche writes BusinessInsider.fr.
France's grocery hypermarkets are losing customers, as this format is becoming too heavy — this trend has been lasting for several years. According to the author, the responsibility for this lies on the retailers themselves - from the moment they started trading via the Internet 11 years ago, they have not done anything new to attract customers. As a conclusion: hypermarkets are losing their market share. If their positions in the food trade still persist, sales of non-food products are sharply reduced (-4% last year). This is due to the competition from e-commerce, as well as to specialized supermarkets (sports, digital, toy stores, books, equipment, furniture, DIY, etc.) that dominate their markets.
To turn the tide, all ideas are good, even the simplest ones like garage sales. The network Leclerc (one of the leaders of the French food retail market along with Carrefour) decided to conduct a similar experiment in a small town near Toulouse. The main goal is to get customers back. They bring their belongings: video games, household appliances, bicycles, books, discs, tools, etc., the seller evaluates them and issues the corresponding coupon for purchases in Leclerc.
According to FMCG specialist Olivier Dover, this decision was obvious: “Many consumers tend to sell products they don’t need and to spend money on something more relevant. At the same time, this allows them to reduce the purchase price, which had seemed too high to them before.”
The market volume of 6 billion Euro
There are already some non-food retailers in France on the secondhand goods market: for example, FNAC (books and multimedia products) and Decathlon. In France, such trade is perceived as a “rational" system of consumption, which allows to solve the problem of purchasing power and ecology, giving a new life to goods, unnecessary to former owners.
The website leboncoin.fr (an analogue of avito.ru) significantly increased their popularity, but the potential of the sector remains huge. According to a study by the Xerfi group, the market for trade in supported goods is growing at 4% per year (which is a lot for Europe) and was estimated at 6 billion euros in 2016. Leclerc has the opportunity to capture some of this huge business, concludes BusinessInsider.fr journalist. If the experiment is successful, no doubt, the rest of the supermarkets will follow its example.
