"Smart shopping": Implications of hard-discounters and multiple-store patronage

The recent economic downturn has made consumers more focused on obtaining good value-for-money and on keeping their spending in check. This dissertation covers the implications of two recent developments indicative of such “smart shopping”: the increased popularity of the “hard-discounter” format, and a rise in systematic multiple-store patronage. The first essay focuses on how the local entry of a hard-discounter affects the market performance of “traditional” supermarkets. It is argued that multiple-store shopping plays an important role in shaping these effects, and helps to both identify possible antecedents, as well as viable response strategies that traditional retailers may undertake. The second essay studies the competitive impact of hard-discounters at a more detailed (category-by-category) level, and examines whether an economy private label – as is employed by many supermarkets in response to hard-discounters – can indeed be effective in reducing this impact. The third essay theorizes and tests how much grocery buyers actually spend across different shopping patterns (such as those involving a hard-discounter and/or multiple stores), given that savings are a common reason for consumers to engage in such patterns. Taken together, this dissertation provides more insight into two phenomena that have remained fairly understudied in the academic marketing literature, but are highly relevant for today’s grocery retailing sector.