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Shopping Hours and Entry - an Empirical Analysis of Aldi’s Opening Hours

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Samuel de Haas
Samuel de Haas
Samuel de Haas
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Daniel Herold at Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen
Daniel Herold
Jan Thomas Schaefer at Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen
Jan Thomas Schaefer
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Abstract and Figures

Aldi, the biggest discounter in Germany, started to systematically extend shopping hours of its stores in 2016. We interpret the decision to extend opening hours of a specific Aldi store as entry into a new market. By using a novel data set containing the opening hours of nearly all German grocery retailers, we find the following interesting correlations: The probability that a given Aldi outlet extends its shopping hours past 8 p.m. (i) increases if nearby Aldi outlets already extended shopping hours and (ii) decreases if nearby stores run by Aldi’s close competitors did not expand shopping hours past 8 p.m.. These results seem surprising in conjunction with cannibalization and residual demand, but can be explained by consumer and firm learning or market expansion.
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https://doi.org/10.1007/s10842-019-00316-1
Shopping Hours and Entry - an Empirical Analysis
of Aldi’s Opening Hours
Samuel de Haas1
·Daniel Herold1
·Jan T. Sch ¨
afer1
Received: 17April 2019 / Revised: 1 July 2019 /
Accepted:7 August 2019 /
©Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract
Aldi, the biggest discounter in Germany, started to systematically extend shopping hours of
its stores in 2016. We interpret the decision to extend opening hours of a specific Aldi store
as entry into a new market. By using a novel data set containing the opening hours of nearly
all German grocery retailers, we find the following interesting correlations: The probability
that a given Aldi outlet extends its shopping hours past 8 p.m. (i) increases if nearby Aldi
outlets already extended shopping hours and (ii) decreases if nearby stores run by Aldi’s
close competitors did not expand shopping hours past 8 p.m.. These results seem surprising
in conjunction with cannibalization and residual demand, but can be explained by consumer
and firm learning or market expansion.
Keywords Shopping hours ·Retailing ·Coordination ·Market entry
JEL Classification L22 ·L41 ·L81
1 Introduction
In mid 2015, Aldi, Germany’s biggest discounter,1started to extend the opening times of
some of its stores from 8 to 9 p.m.. This article empirically examines the drivers of the
decision to open stores longer. For this purpose, we collected data on the opening hours of
all German retail grocery stores as well as the distance between them. By controlling for
socio-demographic variables such as income and population density, we study the strategic
effects driving the decision of Aldi to extend shopping time of a given store until 9 p.m..
1Aldi has 4,195 stores and Lidl, the second largest discounter, 3,187 outlets (See Section 5).
We would like to thank the anonymous referees as well as Niklas D¨urr, Justus Haucap, Paul Heidhues,
Michael Hellwig, Georg G¨
otz and Peter Winker for discussing earlier versions of this article.
Samuel de Haas
samuel.de-haas@wirtschaft.uni- giessen.de
1Justus-Liebig-University, Chair for Industrial Organization, Regulation and Antitrust,
Licher Strasse 62, 35394 Giessen, Germany
Journalof Industry,Competition & Trade (2020)20:139–156
Publishedonline: 2 August 2019
7
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
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