Economy vs Jumbo
US shoppers buy value-added (jumbo) packs and are used to the concept of buying in big quantities (maybe not all of them), without taking into consideration their daily consumption habits even in small families, but they understand the value of what they are getting and on the long run they are definitely cutting their average basket cost.
While warehouse club retailers like Costco, Sam’s Club or BJ’s Wholesale Club charge their clients a memberships cost anywhere from $50 to $100 a year and market the idea that shoppers can save more than the membership cost by shopping at these stores, consumers have different opinions: warehouse prices are not necessarily the best, the yearly fee is not always recouped and shopping at a warehouse is stressful.
In Europe, shoppers are not used much to warehouse clubs and it is not a very popular retail concept, except the Cash&Carry stores of Metro or Selgros targeting mainly the HORECA sector. But instead supermarkets and hypermarkets are offering more and more value added packs, but there are no clear figures about the shares of these Jumbo packs versus the regular ones, nor from the brand principles, neither from the stores, who are very discreet on their checkout figures.
In Lebanon, consumers are quite far from the shopping behavior of both US and EU and Jumbo packs are not very popular, except few brands/products and who while offering these packs are worried about the shelf take-off and think if the shoppers want to buy them, because nobody wants to carry a 10kg washing powder bag.
