16 393 discount shops in the end of 2012, 10 505 normal supermarkets and a that time only 10 064 small supermarkets, 1 010 big supermarkets und 894 department stores – all together a bit less than 39 000 shops. That are figures of the European retail institute. In these figures not mentioned: the buther shops, balkeries, organic shops and other specialists, around 50 % more.
There is no real dramatic change. The discount shops are no more an automatic garantee for succes. Fore sure the small supermarkets have a constant decline. But whether that is due all to change by habits of consumers as the institute tells and due to the tendency of more event shopping could be doubted regarding the simple fact that there are only 5 % of the shops beeing big enough for that.
There is another fact that is striking looking at these figures. Even the german food market is tould as very tough, it is in the end organised in a lot of quite small units. Compared to France with only 65,5 Mio inhabitants, Germany with a bit more than 81 Mio inhabitants has by far more food-shops, In France for example the chains are buying quite higher volumes per article than in Germany and that makes logistics much more easyer. And this is not only caused by local fresh supply which is of course really good.