Trends in the grocery trade

(BZfE) – An obvious trend in the food trade is the shift from offline to online channels. So Sven Poguntke, independent management consultant and university lecturer for "Design Thinking and Innovation Management" at the media campus of the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences. The online delivery service is still a subsidy business - but a huge market. Not only large retail chains play a role here; Small local start-ups also deliver fruit, vegetables and more.

Another trend is the so-called "trading up", in which the trade invests in equipment: away from the hard discounter towards the "Edel-Aldi". Whether in a single shop or many shops under one roof, for example in the market hall: shopping should convey pleasure and experience.

Business ideas from smaller companies and start-ups are copied by large trade organizations - experts have the term copycat for this. The trend towards sustainable consumption has led to the establishment of zero-waste shops. As soon as the trend has reached a critical size, it is adapted by the big players.

Poguntke is convinced that the traditional value chain concept no longer does justice to current developments. Production, processing, distribution, trade and gastronomy, consumption and recycling form a value network that spins around the consumer base. This network has a large number of channels and interfaces, distributed across all value-adding processes and business areas. Overall, the key impulses are increasingly coming from the consumer, in the form of decisions that have a direct impact on the entire value network and to which the industry is more likely to react than vice versa. In marketing, people are therefore thinking less and less in terms of age structures and more individually.

Rüdiger Lobitz, www.bzfe.de