‘PRICELESS’: Delhaize announces price reduction of hundreds of products with eye-catching advertisement | Interior

“’Delhaize is good merchandise… but you also pay for it.’ That’s what many people dare to say about Delhaize. And that’s a pity.” This opens the advertisement in which Delhaize announces that it will charge lower prices on 1,000 house brands. With this, the supermarket chain is expanding the system of ‘Little Lions’ – products with a 10 to 30 percent discount. Until now there were already about 500 ‘Little Lions’ in Delhaize’s assortment.

With the advertisement and the discounts, the chain wants to adjust the perception that Delhaize is a more expensive supermarket and regain the customers it lost in the turbulent past months, says spokesperson Roel Dekelver. A total of 1,000 of the 5,000 house brands will have been greatly reduced in price. “We had previously done this with five hundred other house brands. Sales of those products have since increased by 20 percent.” The promotion will take place in September because that is traditionally a very expensive month, says Dekelver. “With the start of the new school year and many sports activities, a lot of costs have to be incurred.”

It is a general tendency that supermarkets are working very hard on their price image because of hyperinflation, says Gino Van Ossel, retail professor at Vlerick Business School. “That already started before the summer with Aldi, Lidl and Carrefour announcing that they had reduced the price of products. Only it turned out that even more products were rising in price at the same time.” Whether customers will come back is very different in the north and south of our country, says Van Ossel. “In Flanders, many supermarkets are back in a relatively normal situation. The shops are open, the shelves are stocked and the staff are friendly.”

In French-speaking Belgium, however, trade unions, but also consumers, are calling for a boycott of Delhaize and there are also more frequent unannounced actions. “Then you as a customer are faced with a closed door because of a strike picket or you get the feeling that you are not really welcome. I say it very black and white now, but in Flanders you have many more stores where there is no longer much sign of those promotions.” That difference is very important, emphasizes Van Ossel. “In Brussels and French-speaking Belgium, the number of customers going to Delhaize has decreased significantly. You will have to get that back, but I don’t think that will work with price. That has nothing to do with price, for them Delhaize is currently an unreliable store.”