An extremely important economic and social consequence of the political transformation in Poland is the development of retail trade, including the expansion of large-format stores – hypermarkets and supermarkets, most often owned by foreign companies. At the same time, there is a restructuring of store chains and a loss of customers by many small and medium-sized stores to large facilities.
Small-format retail is attempting to limit the development of these chains, even through legal regulations and by obtaining positive opinions from merchant organizations for the establishment of each such facility. One can understand the concerns of the traditional retail sector regarding the loss of customers, but the retail scene cannot be a picture of the rationing of retail offerings. Besides, it is worth remembering that in this discourse, the customer has the most to say, and instead of fighting among themselves, one should fight for the customer by best meeting their expectations, i.e., using marketing weapons.
For small-format retail, this often involves – alongside other actions – logistical reorientation, consisting of accelerating the adaptation of its logistics support systems to create a state of economically effective competitiveness against other entities, which is, of course, beneficial for customers in terms of service, assortment, and price. The organizational formula for this reorientation is store chains. This is particularly important in the segment of frequently purchased goods, primarily food products.
Basic explanations and factography
A store means a small-format retail facility conducting retail sales in a traditional and self-service system, with a net sales area of up to 400 sqm. A grocery store includes the trade of food products and non-alcoholic beverages.
Important features of retail trade:
– 98.6% of retail enterprises are units with at most two sales outlets, and on average, each has 1.1 outlets,
– in the structure of retail units, stores with a sales area not exceeding 50 sqm dominate (=91.8%), and the average area is 54 sqm,
– the share of small and medium-sized grocery stores is dominant (= 73.3%)
– the total number of grocery retail outlets is increasing, with the strongest growth in the years 2000-2002 in the group of hypermarkets – 51.8% and supermarkets by 20.0%, while in the group of stores only by 1.3 – 3.7%
– the share of grocery trade in the structure of retail enterprises is 28.7%
– 59.4% of purchases are made in a small neighborhood store, and 57.1% in a self-service neighborhood supermarket.
– in the structure of food shopping locations, the share of small and medium-sized self-service stores is as high as 72.0%,
– Poland has a number of retail outlets similar to Spain (= 408,481) at the time of its accession to the EU (= 454,853), however, the share of grocery trade in the Spanish structure is significantly higher (= 40.3%),
– the retail space saturation index in Poland is almost twice as low as in EU countries (= 632 sqm/1000 inhabitants) and still similar to the period from a quarter-century ago (= 295 sqm/1000 inhabitants)
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 5/2004.