Discount development in france: The introduction of the format and the competitive response

This article aims to set forth and clarify the factors that caused the rapid development of the hard discount business in France over the past 2 years and to highlight their key impacts. The hard discount business is supposed to have triggered an “intratype” competitive reaction by many French companies which diversified their businesses into this segment, as well as an “intertype” set of reactions by both supermarkets and hypermarkets which implemented the new strategies described in this article based on either cost‐cutting policies and/or trade names differentiation. Conclusions may be drawn following an analysis of the features of this formula as well as the consumers' and competitors' responses. One conclusion may be that the discounters are also bound to increase their market share further once the economic crisis is over. In fact, this business meets the on‐going purchasing and shopping needs by most of the consumers.