The brand has blocked the price of masks and the first price baguette, creating tensions with producers and competitors.
After the baguette and the FFP2 masks, will the Leclerc stores block the prices?Ricard and Nescafé»? Faced with inflation, the chairman of the strategic committee of the Leclerc group announced, on the set of BFMTV this Thursday, an upcoming blocking of prices on consumer products. “There are about 200 to 300 products whose prices the French know very well“, explained Michel-Edouard Leclerc. “Don’t lose their trust“.
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Defense of purchasing power
The brand has multiplied marketing moves in recent weeks, with the blocking of fuel at cost price before the holidays, as well as the freezing of the selling prices of FFP2 masks, despite protests from pharmacists. Last blow: the group announced that the price of the first price baguette would be capped at 0.29 euros for at least four months. An announcement that aroused the ire of farmers, millers, bakers as well as the competition. Michel Biero, executive director of Lidl France, has decided to alignwith regret“. “It’s not very responsible because it’s fueling a price war that destroys values and it’s sending a dramatic message to an agricultural world that is in great distress today.»
Michel-Edouard Leclerc brushed aside these protests: “Lidl has become gentrified. He forgot where he came from. If I take over while he gentrifies, I don’t mind“. To Thierry Marx, who published a column in Liberation to denounce a “cynical masquerade“, Leclerc replies:”with its menus at 500 euros, we do not have the same clientele“.
The chairman of the strategic committee has positioned himself as a herald of purchasing power, arguing that the purchasing power preserved by distributors, “these are less inflation checks“. Questioned, the distributor admits having cherished political ambitions but affirms today to feel more usefulon supermarket floors“.
Read alsoBaguette at 29 cents: Lidl aligns itself with the price of E. Leclerc centers
His “blows of comare in any case well established. “Invest in markers“, he adds. That is to say prices with almost symbolic value, which Leclerc promotes fully. At the height of the health crisis, the group had thus promoted an offer of “meal at 1 eurofor precarious students, aligning there with the prices offered for a meal at the Crous. “When the state does it, it’s fine, but when it’s us…“, thus pretended to rebel Michel-Edouard Leclerc.