Consumers across Europe no longer want to travel to big car-dependent hypermarkets on the edge of cities to buy food and goods. Here’s why.

  • AJ Sadauskas
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    fedilink
    21 year ago

    @poVoq The response in Australia from the big two supermarket chains has basically been to cut back their range. In most product categories, you’ll now find just the supermarket brand, and maybe one or two other brands.

    Aldi and CostCo have entered the Australian market, but they’re only relatively small players. Ironically, there used to be a couple of fairly strong discount supermarket chains (Franklin’s No Frills and BiLo) around 20 years ago, but they ended up being bought out by the big chains, and now no longer exist.

    With shopping centres, one of the differences between Melbourne and Sydney is that in Sydney, almost all of the big ones (with a few exceptions) are right next door to a train station. In Melbourne, only a few are.

    Obviously, the ones next to train stations seem to be performing better. Most are anchored by both of the major supermarkets, which seems to drive foot traffic.

    The other trend that’s emerged in the past year or so is that some shopping centres are getting redeveloped to include offices and apartments, because land is so expensive.

    Box Hill Central is an example: https://www.urban.com.au/news/vic/vicinity-secures-approval-for-first-stage-of-box-hill-central-redevelopment

    New centres like Central Park in Sydney also have apartments: https://www.domain.com.au/news/fairytale-ending-the-last-piece-of-sydneys-central-park-puzzle-is-ready-20160729-gqdskn/