With every year Polish retail market is being monopolised by contemporary huge sales chains. However, half of it are still traditional shops, which sooner or later convert into chain shops on the basis of franchising terms.
Polish shopping attitudes and behaviours change as the economy changes. At present, Polish customers prefer to buy less, but more often. It is more common for them to go to a small supermarket or a discount food store, rather than a huge hypermarket. Some chains have noticed the trend, so they have focused on building up corner supermarkets, such as Tesco supermarket or Carrefour Express/Carrefour Market.
In Poland for 1000 inhabitants there are 97 m2 of supermarkets and discount food stores. In Germany the rate is 285 m2. As we can see, Poland is still not saturated with retail sales and represents a huge potential for development.
The market is consolidating. Small stores or supermarkets located in the customers’ neighbourhood are becoming franchised. Such shops are the ones who benefit from food sales most. Development of hypermarkets is not as dynamic as it used to be before.
The leader in the Polish market, regarding turnovers and the number of supermarkets, is Biedronka – chain discount food stores (it belongs to Portugese Jeronimo Martins Distribution group). Every year Biedronka opens 200-300 new supermarkets. Last year, the chain’s turnover amounted to 25 000 000 000 PLN. Two other discount food stores – Lidl and Netto- are following in JMD’s footsteps. At the end of the 2012, Lidl had 440 shops (now 500), while Netto (having 240 shops) was awarded „Retailer of the Year” as the best food discount store.
As you can see, another year in a row, the number of small corner stores is decreasing (5%), while the number of supermarkets is increasing (8%).
| Store Type | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | Diff 2011 vs 2012 |
| Hypermarkets>2500 m2 | 282 | 289 | 309 | 313 | 1% |
| Supermarkets<2500 m2 | 4 201 | 4 606 | 4 971 | 5 368 | 8% |
| Discount food stores>300 m2 | 1 777 | 2 000 | 2 271 | 2 642 | 16% |
| Large Food Stores | 5 425 | 5 605 | 5 950 | 5 977 | 0% |
| Medium Food Stores | 31 556 | 30 784 | 30 915 | 30 583 | -1% |
| Small Food Stores | 54 045 | 52 127 | 49 298 | 47 017 | -5% |
Large surface sales of numerical share over 4% has 51% share in turnover in the whole country and is still increasing compared to previous years. It’s easy noticeable that the growth is driven by discount food stores.
| Outlet Type | Numeric importance 2012 | ACV* Importance | |||
| 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | ||
| Hypermarkets>2500 m2 | 0,2% | 13,0% | 12,9% | 12,8% | 11,9% |
| Supermarkets<2500 m2 | 2,1% | 16,70% | 17,40% | 17,50% | 16,40% |
| Discount food stores>300 m2 | 2,1% | 14,5% | 16,7% | 19,8% | 22,7% |
* Actual Cash Value