Le marche commerciali di primo prezzo: minacce ed opportunità per i retailers europei

In the past two years, the European retail market has been caracterized by consumers' growing request for inexpensiveness, as to their demand for grocery products. This phenomenon has proved to be particularly evident in countries like France, Germany and Italy where, by the way, the discount format market share has increased drammatically, confirming a change in the buying behaviour of rather large consumer demand segments. Simultaneously, some of the retailers operating internationally have been adopting a strategy aimed at boosting the inexpensiveness of their offer, predominantly using private labels. In such context, some retailers have lowered the average price positioning of their store brands, wherease others have increased price promotin with regard to their how brands, and some others have introduced first price private labels as a lower priced alternative to offer their customers. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the latter solutions in particular, with a view to verifying the impat it has had on retailers' overall image as well as on the economic results they have achieved so far.