Interesting Discounts in Hypermarkets this Month?

Hi everyone,

Do you have the same feeling as me?

As a retiree, living in the neighborhood of 4 hypermarkets (4 at less than 30 minutes on foot), I like to keep an eye on their catalogs and check their prices.

I am used to seeing their periodic discounts:
- 3rd article for free ie -33% (buying 3)
- 2nd items at -50% ie -25% (buying 2)
From time to time (annually), the big and exceptional discounts at 2nd for free ie -50%

I don't know why but this month (March), there were several weeks with very good bargains:
- one payed = one free (Leclerc this week) ie -50% (buying 2)
- minus 50% (buying 1) (Carrefour this week after previous weeks)
- same thing at Cora
- same thing at Auchan

Usually, we could get a -33% discount when buying 3... I would say it's the normal discount for quantity.
The stores also classically balance discounts by bulk quantities.

This month, there's something weird! many weeks with -50% on single products!!

What happens??

- high competition (why this month?)
- setlements of accounts at the end of the trimester... I thought sales persons of hypermarkets checked their accounts daily.

My guess: Big losses all trimester long that make them discount before the end of March to get tidy accounts for shareholders (salespeople check daily but shareholders and financiers have quarter published accounts).

That reminds me of years back: salespeople asked me to help them before the end of the term because they absolutely needed to reach their objectives (and they were offering me very big discounts - they risked lay-off).


Does anyone have explanations or comments?

That's very interesting Gérard ! As far as I am concerned, I hate hypermarkets and prefer to go to a small shop and a butcher round the corner. They know me and are friendly. The shop has "carrefour products" and the butcher supplies with local farms. When my husband takes his retirement, it will be different !

Hi Muriel, hi everyone,

Thanks for your post !

Must I understand that when your husband retires, he'll be in charge of runniing errands in the supermarket?
... indeed very exciting program for P. who surely dreams of visiting European capitals and friends throughout the world...

(just teasing you)

A few remarks about the chosen words:
> to a small shop and a butcher round the corner.
In academic English (from Oxford), they should say "to the butcher's" but it's true that nowadays, they tend to shorten things and simply say "to the butcher". So your sentence is right, did you know ?
> They know me and are friendly.
True! Managers of hypermarkets try to humanize things with red jackets (or other colors) reading "Puis-je vous aider ?" (this is Carrefour) or the like.

> the butcher supplies with local farms.
I guess (in fact I'm sure) this is not grammatically correct.
You could say "the butcher supplies me from local farms", "the butcher supplies me with produce from local farms", "local farms supply the butcher",... "the butcher supplies produce from local farms to me" (this last expression is here just to show the construction of the sentence but it is heavy).
To supply looks like to provide re the grammatical construction.