In retail, cannibalisation generally means opening too many stores and seeing business being spread too thinly between them. For Associated British Foods’ Primark operation, it has another meaning, as seen in the rapid expansion of the cheap clothing chain in Germany and the Netherlands.
Germans, for example, would willingly travel 50km to visit a Primark. Open one nearer to them, and they will use that one, and sales at the existing store fall. Based on the chain’s experience of expanding in the UK, after a while the original store’s sales start to grow again, the company claims.
Primark added seven outlets in the two countries, bringing the total to 28. This is behind an estimated 1 per cent fall in like-for-like sales at Primark in