Easter shopping map in hand

Sales in the major stores (both supermarkets and hypermarkets) surged before Easter, compared to both the regular periods and to the same time last year. This came as no surprise, though.
The new thing this year was the consumer behaviour. The clients knew exactly what and where to look for so that they went straight for it.
“People did not stop to look around this year; they knew exactly what they wanted to buy and where it was located the moment they entered the store. We had people standing in line as early as one hour after the opening, compared to three or four hours as before,” says an employee of one of the foreign companies that holds stores in Romania. Therefore shopping this year was not only done list in hand, but also (supermarket) map in hand.
Under the circumstances, it was only natural that the period before the Easter holidays should be better than last year, with merchants saying they registered 10% to 40-50% growth in sales this year.
“Sales at our stores are constantly progressing, and the growth in the Easter time keeps up with the global growth of the store,” Francois Oliver, Carrefour Romania general manager said. The sales of the French group’s store located at the Bucharest end of the Bucharest-Pitesti road went up nearly 10% in Q1, amounting to more than 21 million euros.
The hard discount-type stores posted even higher growth this year.
“We have had 25% growth for the store in Bucharest, the only one that was open in the corresponding period of last year,” says Rainer Exel, general manager of Rewe Romania, the company operating the XXL Mega Discount! network. Rewe Romania’s turnover growth is even higher considering it holds four stores, with the last two of them opened in Buzau and Targoviste several weeks ago.
The growth was induced by the traditional products for this season, as expected, after all.
“Our best-sellers were cakes, chocolate products and lamb,” the Carrefour representative says. Still, this year brought along some changes compared to the pattern established over the last few years.
“I believe not all the clients strictly kept the fast, considering that albeit the fasting products sold very well, the animal foods, such as meat and meat products, did not see a significant decline in sales,” Rainer Exel feels. ionut.bonoiu@zf.ro