Structural change in retailing and wholesaling intensifies

The distributive trade in Germany suffered a noticeable decline in sales and employees in 2002. Due to the unfavourable business environment, both a noticeable consumer reserve and a noticeable demand weakening in wholesaling occurred in 2002. Whereas the nominal sales decline in retailing was 2.1% (real: -2.5%), the nominal drop in wholesaling was 3.4% (real: -2.7%). These regressive volumes of turnover can be put down, in retailing, to regressive demand and to weak domestic demand and in wholesaling to the declining demand for industrial raw materials and in particular the import drops, which particularly affected the larger wholesaling and trading enterprises. The economic trends in German distribution are increasingly overlaid, however, by structural changes that result from a changed purchase behaviour of specific consumer groups and from the increasing globalisation of wholesale distribution.