The decision came at a time when time is money and Romanian consumers are changing their spending patterns, following in the footsteps of the West. They are now shopping more often in stores near their homes or offices, where they only buy what they need.
Under the circumstances, Carrefour and Auchan bet on smaller, supermarket-type stores, and Kaufland started looking for space in malls or on the ground floor of residential complexes. Cora froze investments in new stores, keeping only 11 large stores in Romania.
Overall, retailers are looking for solutions as hypermarkets are losing ground and market share to smaller and discount stores, but the everyone feels these big stores will not go away they will only change.
Romanian consumers spent more than 24 billion lei or EUR5 billion in hypermarkets last year.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)