Firsthand retail trends

Trade Marketing Club’s last meeting was held on 21 April 2011 in the BKIK building, where participants discussed the latest retail trends. Zsuzsanna Hermann, one of the club’s founders welcomed participants and asked FM Logistic sales director Zsolt Csiszár to give his presentation. The French company serves partners’ demand with complex activities. They offer co-manufacturing solutions and do the time-consuming complex work of assembling and packaging for partners. FM Logistic’s co-packing department carries out seasonal or promotional tasks such as labelling, promotional packaging and loading displays. Bernadett Osztoics, Nielsen’s customer relations director was the next presenter. She told that both consumer confidence and FMCG retail moderately improved on European markets in the second part of 2010. In Hungary retail turnover stopped falling but the consumer confidence index is still fluctuating. She pointed out that the financial crisis changed consumption and shopping habits surprisingly quickly: two out of three Hungarian consumers changed their spending habits. Many try to economise on food, household chemical and cosmetics products. As for the structure of retail, Ms Osztoics told that last year Nielsen registered 19,569 general food stores – 430 less than a year earlier. Small floor space-stores are losing ground, hypermarkets still realise one third of FMCG value sales; another 30 percent belongs to the 410-2,500m² channel. It is becoming more important for consumers to shop in stores that are close to where they live. Otília Dörnyei, GfK Hungária’s customer relations director informed that world economy had been sending positive signs but special Hungarian characteristics painted the picture a bit less optimistic. Examining the whole of 2010 we can see that retail turnover remained in the negative and shopping willingness did not increase either. Consumers have become more conscious recently, comparing brands to choose the most optimal product. Shoppers visit 4 chains and a small shop on average each month and the typical household goes to 9 chains in a year – consumers are less loyal to stores than they used to be. Krisztina Kovács, GfK Hungária’s Consumer Tracking sector manager started her presentation with shedding some light on how rapidly private label products have been expanding on the Hungarian market in the past 10 years. Economic recession brought this expansion to a halt in 2009. This might seem contradictory but in the first phase of the crisis shoppers cut back on the volume of their purchases instead of switching to lower-value products, plus manufacturer brands started promoting their products intensively and managed to keep many buyers. When consumer confidence started to return in 2010, private labels started to grow once again. In the next five years this expansion will continue but it will slow down. When answering participants’ questions, the presenters told that research findings did not indicate increased patriotism as regards Hungarian products. Trade Marketing Club’s next meeting will be held in the garden of Szépkilátás confectionery at 15:00 on 2 June 2011.