Dutch supermarket chain Jumbo changes its pricing locally in the Netherlands, but it does not (yet?) seem to apply the same strategy in its first stores in Belgium. However, it does seem to be engaging fully in a price war, lowering prices immediately after its expansion.
Pressure mounts
At present, Jumbo does not adjust sales prices on a local basis in its two Belgian supermarkets, Daltix concludes. The data analyst put together a shopping basket of 180 branded products and compared their prices in both Belgian Jumbo stores (Rijkevorsel and Pelt) on 20 November. The sales prices were found to be identical. There may be several reasons for this: either Jumbo sees both locations as a similar playing field (although there is no Colruyt store in Rijkevorsel), or the retailer has not (yet) started separate pricing in Belgium.
In addition, Daltix found out that Jumbo has meanwhile changed its prices for 80 of the 180 items measured, often lowering them, in comparison with the opening day in Pelt. As a result, the price of the shopping basket fell by 1.5%, which only serves to increase the pressure on the Belgian retail landscape. Consequently, the price difference between a shopping basket at Colruyt and one at Jumbo becomes very small, Daltix says.
After the new price reductions, Jumbo is now 8.9 % cheaper in Belgium than in the Netherlands, working on the basis of a shopping basket of 330 branded products. That difference is smaller than the difference of 17 % reported by consumers organisation Test-Aankoop, but the consumer organisation only measured 50 products. The differences in price are greatest in the dairy, baby and chemist categories.
