After months of debate without apparent fruit, the main supermarket in Spain enters fully into the strategy of the extraordinary measures to mitigate the effect of inflation in the consumer’s pocket. Mercadona announced this Wednesday that it will lower the price of 500 products around which it begins to detect some cost containment. The chain will undertake this reduction from now until the end of the year, a decision with a similar approach to the one that other important companies have been announcing distribution chains in the last weeks.
In this way, the Government – led in this case by the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz – achieves one of the demands that it had put on the table from the beginning: that regardless of the reduction of IVA of certain food products, the large supermarket chains will lower their prices as much as possible. The First Vice President Nadia Calvino, has also sent repeated messages to distribution companies for the same purpose. The chains, for their part, have always defended that this is a cost crisis and, as such, it was of no use (and could even be counterproductive) for only part of the chain to reduce prices.
In fact, the general position of the sector to date had been that these companies have been months forcing margins y increasing the number of offers to do their bit to solve the problem.
However, buy it (and consequently also caprabo) broke the trend in mid-March by launching a campaign to lower the price of up to 1,000 products. the catalan chain good price announced at the end of the month that it was activating a measure for three months by which it would return 5% of the price of fresh meat and fish to its customers. This same Tuesday, Yes He explained that he would invest 15% more this year than the previous one (150 million euros) in increasing the number of promotions and discounts within his establishments.
And now, Mercadonawhich to date had focused on designing internal costing strategies to avoid having to shamelessly raise prices, it has also burst onto the scene with the sale of 500 products.
The importance of the measure
This decision transcends for several reasons. First, because it is the leading chain in Spain, with what it has ability to drag many others to similar decisions, especially taking into account that one of the peculiarities of the Spanish market is that there are so many players that it is very difficult to compete if one of them deviates from the usual prices. Second, because this supermarket never makes discounts or specific offers, since its company policy is to always sell at the lowest possible price. Third, because its owner and president, Juan Roigpositioned itself openly a few weeks ago against artificially lowering food prices.
The issue, according to the Valencian company in a statement, is that the group has detected that the costs associated with this set of products are beginning to drop and has decided to “pre-empt” this decline and adjust its final sale price. They talk about preserves like the tunadairy like some cheeses y yogurts, nuts, oils, cleaning and maintenance products for the home, pastries, perfumery… and several fresh foodwhich will be identified with a special label.
“The initiative, which is carried out without touching the quality of the products and guaranteeing the sustainability of the entire food chain [uno de los argumentos que blandió Roig para negarse a una cesta de la compra de precio topado], will mean savings for customers of 200 million euros between now and the end of the year,” the company details in a statement. According to his calculations, this will have a margin impact of the company of 0.6 points.
Other strategies
In any case, Mercadona is not the only chain that has decided to do something like this to help lower the final price of the shopping cart.
Eroski / Caprabo
In the midst of a debate on whether the Spanish Government should promote an agreement with supermarket chains such as the one just announced in France, Eroski announced that it would invest 12 million euros in launching a campaign that involved lowering the price of up to 1,000 products. . He called it’Basket that falls in love‘, entered into force in mid-March and the measure will be in force throughout 2023.
good price
The Catalan chain announced at the end of March that it would subsidize, for three months, 5% of what its client spends on carne y fresh fish, foods exempt from the VAT reduction. The supermarket explained that it plans to allocate 2 million euros to this measure, which works in such a way that registered customers who buy meat or fish are returned to their customer card 5% of what they have spent on these products.
Yes
This distribution company has also announced this week that it will increase what it invested last year in offers and discounts with the intention of helping the consumer’s pocket. Thus, Dia will invest 150 million euros in promotions that will reach up to 30% discount and that will be applied to more than 100 products, with special prominence of the frescos. This plan also includes increasing the commitment to own-brand products.