Customers regard DIY stores as an uninspired patchwork of goods and services

In spite of all the efforts undertaken by participants in the market to differentiate themselves from the competition, German DIY stores are perceived by their customers to be an uninspired patchwork of goods and services. This has emerged from a large-scale and up-to-date consumer survey by Konzept & Markt of Wiesbaden and Dähne Verlag of Ettlingen. The fact that individual retailers are following different concepts in the meantime, that their approach to customers and shaping of the product assortment are being dynamically organised to reach specific target groups, and that their market approach is being more clearly individualised: none of this seems to have got through to customers yet.
The way customers perceive the German DIY retailers is still mainly through their pricing. At the same time, though, they invest the DIY stores with surprisingly little authority or consumer confidence in this area. Namely, if consumers are asked where they can do their shopping at competitive prices, there is a clear divergence between the desired ideal consumer rating for DIY stores of 8.3 points (on a ten-point scale) and the figures that were actually achieved by the individual retailers. In this respect, not even Praktiker is credited with any markedly greater competence. The company achieves a top rating only in the question of discount campaigns.
An overall ranking list is obtained once the individual results of all the factors under appraisal (choice, pricing level, quality and service, staff, atmosphere, advertising, and location/accessibility) have been added together. Hornbach comes top twice altogether (for "quality and service" and "choice"), while the Globus DIY stores are top in five categories at once ("staff", "pricing level", "atmosphere", "advertising", and "location/accessibility"). The race between Globus and Hornbach was neck-and-neck right to the finish, with Globus eventually managing to win by a narrow margin. These two are followed by a broad midfield comprising Bauhaus, Max Bahr, Hagebaumarkt and Marktkauf Baumarkt, four companies that are above the market average. At any rate, between Globus at the top of the list and Praktiker at the bottom there are 142 base points, which represents a difference of almost 6.5 per cent.