Why Polish consumers pay more for the same products then western neighbours?

The pre-Holiday period is a time of intensified shopping for the consumers and an opportunity for the shops to increase their sales. In the context of the issue of the quality of products offered by the sales networks in Poland that was already raised in the previous edition of the UCLP Newsletter, the discussion that took place recently in the Polish press on price differentiating of the same products in Germany and Poland is worth mentioning. The impulse for this debate was a survey conducted by one of the companies carrying out surveys and audits.

Taketask company analysed prices of 86 products sold in the sales network Lidl in Poland and in Germany. The survey showed that a consumer will pay about 60 PLN more in Poland than in Germany for a basket of identical products, and 70% of compared products were more expensive in Polish shops.

The representatives of the mentioned sales network in response to the presented results of the survey (which was accused of the wrong methodology) explain that the price of the product is influenced by many factors such as taxes, packaging production costs, transport and storage as well as size of the orders. There are over 3000 Lidl shops operating on the German market, while there are only around 600 in Poland. This indicated that in Germany Lidl has much more purchasing power when ordering supplies which means lower unit price per product.

However, information on how the sales network operates raised doubts as to the equal treatment of the consumers in the European Union. An interpellation was sent to the European Commission by the Member of the European Parliament Kosma Złotowski that aims to establish whether offering products of the same brand in the shops of the same network sales but different prices is consistent with the EU consumer policy and whether it is a fair commercial practice.

The topic of consumer protection in the context of quality and prices of the products has been a subject of the debate on the EU forum. In September 2017 the European Commission announced a program concerning fight against unfair commercial practices including fight against products of lower quality and overpriced offered by the sales networks to the consumers.

An article on guidelines of the European Commission may be found under the following link: