“The Hungarian shops are suffering in the neighborhood of Chinese shops”
It can clearly be seen that consumers’ behavior concerning garment and shoe shopping is changing. Less and less people are buying and more rarely and mostly looking for sales promotions. As a consequence the Chinese shops are getting more and more popular among the customers.
The global economic-financial crises have had an effect on the performance of the Hungarian retail trade, more closely on the garment trade. The consumption of the households has continuously decreased in the past years.
The CEO of a market leader second hand shop said, when interviewed, that the basket value has been halved at his company since 2009. At the same time the officer said the range of consumers are quite wide, some people buy of necessity there, some others from passion.
The survey of GFK Consumer Panel Services indicates that the Hungarian households were buying less garment products in 2011 than in 2010, while the turnover increased because of the rise of retail prices. Concerning the shoe market the situation is a bit different, after the stagnation in 2010 the turnover increased in 2011. The last 4 month of the year has always been important for the shoe traders, since they realize about 40% of their turnover during that period. The reason is that shoes for winter use (brogues, boots etc.) cost more that the summer assortment.
The trend is that buyers prefer the shoe trade chains, sport shop chains and the shops of the Fareast (commonly called Chinese market), while the turnover of individual, stand-alone shops are continuously decreasing.