BUDAPEST: SKesko is poised to open 30 new K-supermarkets and 100 new corner shops as well as renew its chain of K-citymarkets.
The retailer unveiled its new strategy on Wednesday, declaring that it will seek profitable growth in the grocery trade, the building and home improvement trade and the car trade business segments. Kesko estimates that it will invest approximately one billion euros in the implementation of its strategy in 2015—2017.
In addition, the retailer will reduce its fixed costs by a minimum of 50 million euros and overhaul its customer loyalty programme, K-Plussa. The traditional retailer currently operates over 900 grocery shops across Finland.
The expansion represents the efforts of Kesko to prevent its share of the domestic grocery market from falling further and to reverse the downward trend by the end of 2016. A study carried out by Nielsen found that the K-Group enjoyed a 33.1 per cent share of the grocery market last year, representing a fall of nearly 1 percentage point.
