The big winners of those years were the hypermarket, discount and modern convenience store chains, while small retailers and cash & carry chains lost ground, ZF has found from the data provided by market research company GfK.
There are about 56,000 stores in the local grocery retail, only 2,000 of which are operated by modern hypermarkets, supermarkets, discount, convenience and cash&carry stores. They account for 57% of the market by sales, about EUR11 billion a year. On the other hand, traditional retail numbers 54,000 stores and the number is dwindling, as is its market share.
The trend is not specific to Romania, which actually follows in the footsteps of developed countries. Modern retail in Austria, for instance, accounts for 87% of the market. Analysts and executives in the industry say the Romanian market is headed the same way.
Traditional retail will not disappear in Romania, though, they say, because about half of the country’s population lives in rural areas, where modern retail has barely entered. Profi is the only foreign-held chain that went there, on a market dominated by small retailers. Romania is the country with highest percentage of rural population in Europe, even higher than in Bulgaria, for instance.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)