Smarter Pricing: How to capture more value in your market

7. Range, choice and selection

Discounters frequently provide standard ranges at very low prices. For example, hard discounter Aldi has 7,000 stores and is close to being one of the world’s top ten largest food retailers. Yet it offers only 700 different high-volume products. The very narrowness of the range and the inevitable standardization provides an opportunity for creative rivals.

How it works

The USA retailer, Target, based in Minneapolis, attacks Wal-Mart with an edited up-market selection of goods. Some of these are created exclusively by its own design team. The Economist magazine commented that such is the status of these designs that some customers affectionately nickname Target as ‘tar-jay’ affecting a French pronunciation to highlight ...