Fresh and youthful – shop transformation the Match way

On 25 November the Match supermarket in Budapest’s Duna Plaza reopened. Before opening, those ‘responsible’ for the renovation guided Trade magazin around the store. Tamás Szendrő, sales director of Csemege-Match Zrt. emphasised at the beginning that the transformation of the store was not the first step of a comprehensive change in concept. He told us that their strategy is to adapt stores to local conditions, after thoroughly surveying the demands of shoppers. Before the transformation, the store’s sales area was much bigger and the new Match’s interior was made more attractive to those arriving from the shopping mall’s side.

The new assortment also serves customer demand better – this is guaranteed by the fact that 700 shoppers filled out questionnaires, but statistics from the old Match were also used. In the 1,000 m² sales area 11,200 items are available. Product marketing director Andrea Kollár told us that in the case of each section their goal was to provide a wide range of quality products, but they did not forget about first-price products either. What about the store staff? Well, the team is young and dynamic as the average is age between 30 and 32. There are 26-30 people in the team and members participated in special training, where they learned the ins and outs of categories from product managers. Dairy products, bakery products and vegetables are situated close to the entrance as Match puts the focus on fresh products; these are also ‘magnet’ categories because there are lots of offices in the area from where workers often visit the store to grab something for breakfast. Since the shopping mall is frequented by young people who are conscious about eating healthy, organic products are situated in a way that they can be seen from the mall’s corridor – informs Balázs Palkovics, marketing communications executive. For the same reasons Match’s convenience product familyes, innovation award-winning Gourm & Go is also placed close to the entrance. There are four traditional cash registers and two rapid ones which sport a vivid colour – those who only bought a couple of things can pay here quickly.

The store opens at 7 a.m and closes at 10 p.m., but at the weekend they only open at 8 o’clock. As for the store’s interior, concept and design manager Annamária Boros told us that in the different sections they used furniture of special design as well, the category indicating signs contain information in three languages and their graphic solutions are very youthful. On the route that leads to the cash registers we find a vast number of sweets and desserts. With its exclusive products Match intends to continue the traditions of its predecessor, Julius Meinl. The new store’s main goal is to have the same number of shoppers as before the transformation, when the store’s sales area was bigger.