The retail face of consumer disenchantment H ow the peasant world, retail is also the unloved consumers? Is it from the status of "public friend number one," the first defender to its purchasing power to that of "public enemy", as George says CHETOCHINE, a consultant specializing in the sector? The disenchantment of consumers will probably not too far. However, in silence, the French support the struggle of farmers against Leclerc, Auchan, Carrefour, Casino and Intermarché, accused of strangling producers comfortable to pocket profits. Figaro.fr poll finds that 80% of respondents understood the anger of farmers.
The French are not - or more - fooled. "They understood that in recent years has developed the retail margins widely exaggerated" attests Alain Bazot, president of the consumer association UFC-Que Choisir. "The image of the great dis tribution is tarnished " he says.
hypermarket sales sag. Attendance down. Consumers they prefer more and more small grocery stores and neighborhood markets, left to pay, sometimes a little more expensive. According to the Research Center for the Study and Observation of Living Conditions (Credoc), the French have developed to a "desire for revenge " against players in the supermarket.
For history has changed. In the 1970s and 1980s, superstores contributed to disinflation. Thanks to them, low-income households in cities, in rural areas, were able to buy a TV, vacuum cleaner, and especially fresh food.
Today, despite an aggressive and militant speeches, mass marketing no longer means cheap. "Between 2000 and 2003, retail inflation has been and still is for 2 008" observes Nicolas Bouzou, economist at Asters. The debate on the margins back incomprehensible did at least understand that the public sector practices were at least opaque. Some dare say unfair.
For consumers, the hypocrisy of suspected distributors fight against the living became apparent with the crisis. He may have resigned to inflate the price of pasta, early 2008 due to soaring wheat prices, it was more difficult to accept that prices are not falling over themselves after they had relapsed. The supermarket was called victim. In vain.
The consumer, more knowledgeable, takes stock: those who claim to grocers appear for several years now prominently in the ranking of the largest fortunes in France. As for their "groceries", they are often multinational companies listed on the CAC 40.
A priori nothing wrong. The role of business is to grow and make money. Attacks against distributors may seem all most unfair that under other professions margins - about 2% to 6% - are not exorbitant. Because of the crisis, the profits of the largest players have even declined over 20% in 2008. And before the crisis, their results remained without comparison with those of their competitors Anglo-Saxon giants Tesco and Wal-Mart.
For most French people, "everything that is great is harmful to the economy, planet" , says the sociologist Gérard Mermet, author of The Francoscopie. "Small is beautiful", he said, and the struggle of "global deal to the local" , the French chose, as usual, to defend the smallest if not the lowest.
And regardless of whether the trade and distribution, with 650,000 employees, is the largest private employer in the country. The audience holds the fate of these cashiers paid minimum wage after ten years of age and gradually replaced by machines. He is dismayed to hear cases, though, and thankfully, exceptional, some of them dismissed for a paltry cash error or punished for going on strike.
Resentment towards mass distribution is not rational. It is emotional. The consumer likes to consume but feel guilty. "Using is destroy" says Mermet. The rise of environmental concern is no stranger to this feeling. Supermarkets pay to be places of temptation. Discounters aside, they are for modern households, a parody of consumer society.
Development Strategies signs have only reinforced that decision. The hypermarkets have become "gigamarchés" tens of thousands of square meters in which department managers move on skates. To offer more choice, stores were transformed into laboratories marketing testing the consumer to make him buy more, more often. And it is not uncommon today in more than fifty references radius toothbrushes ...
The "hyper" went too far. The French saturate. But large retailers, accustomed to attacks by rule, may not have had the last word.
Service Economy
Email: gatinois@lemonde.fr
