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Jumbo‘s Belgian supermarkets attract their customers mainly from discounters such as Aldi, Colruyt and Lidl, as well as from Dutch rival Albert Heijn – which in Belgium is perceived as a low-cost chain as well.
36 supermarkets
On Wednesday morning, Jumbo opened its 36th Belgian store, in Maldegem. The 2,200 sqm supermarket employs eighty people and is run by entrepreneur Danijel Vidovic. The store opens in a real battleground, where all competitors are present: from Aldi and Lidl over Colruyt to Delhaize, Spar and Albert Heijn. So what are the chances of this new supermarket, and where should its customers come from?
According to Jumbo CEO Ton van Veen, the chain’s Belgian supermarkets are achieving double-digit growth, much faster than the market average, even though Belgian consumers are usually quite loyal to their supermarket and do not switch easily. This led data company Accurat to analyse visitor flows around six supermarkets Jumbo opened in 2023: Antwerp, Bilzen, Lier, Middelkerke, Oudenaarde and Tessenderlo. The company looked at evolutions in the ten nearest competitors around each shop, so sixty stores in total.
Price image starts to pay off
Two to four months after opening, the six new Jumbo shops achieved 15.6 % local visit share – which, to be clear, is not the same as sales share. After eight months, that share rises to 16.4 %. About two-thirds of visits come from customers of cheaper chains (Albert Heijn, Aldi, Colruyt and Lidl): they lose about ten percentage points of local visit share.
Retailers like Carrefour, Delhaize, Okay and Spar lose only six percentage points of theirs. Additionally, chains that are strong on prices do lose relatively the most in the six to eight months after the reference period. This may indicate that Jumbo’s value proposition with its low prices is slowly penetrating Belgian consumers.
