Consumption Behavior - Comparison of SPAR and LIDL

Recently certain serious changes in the dynamic retailing sector could be noticed. Changes in the market environment, and a certain adjustment of the customers’ needs, demand for a reaction in the market. Satisfying these changing needs, the importance of discounters in the retailing branch was more and more strengthened, since these markets are beginning to better meet the needs of the majority of customers in the market. Consequently discounters face a certain success and were able to grow and to capture new market shares of other retailing institutions by generating more and more sales.
Therefore the aim of this paper is to provide a description of the current situation and the further expected development in the retailing market in Europe. To stress the importance of the discounters’ influence on the market as well as the difference between different market’s institutions satisfying various and differing needs of differentiating groups of customers, a comparison of an exemplary ordinary retailer, SPAR, and an exemplary discounter, the LIDL Stiftung & Co. KG, is provided. Within the whole retailing industry, the food branch provides an exemplary market to work out these differences among discounters and ordinary supermarkets. In this market, discounters faced a certain success and customer changes could be more clearly and numerously recognized.