Retailers expect windfall from election campaigns

By Kwanchai Rungfapaisarn

The Nation

The modern retail sector expects gains of Bt40 billion to Bt50 billion from political campaigns in the run-up to the July 3 general election.

Thai Retailers Association president Busaba Chirathivat said spending by political

parties for their campaigns on public relations, media printing and related activities will generate cash and jobs for those involved in these activities.

This will increase buying power and more spending on retail products, which will benefit the modern trade sector.

"I believe that the country's consumer confidence index will improve significantly," said Busaba.

Busaba said that overall sales of modern retailers had reached about Bt690 billion last year, up 7.3 per cent over 2009.

"We expect overall sales of modern trade retailers to increase 8 per cent, to Bt750 billion, this year," she said.

Dr Chatchai Tuangrattana-pan, local retail expert and an adviser to the Thai Retailers Association, said a large amount of money from the political campaigns would be spread at the grass-roots level.

"Retail stores, such as grocery shops, convenience stores and hypermarkets, which rely heavily on the grass-roots people, will benefit as they will spend the money immediately on buying commodity goods," said Chatchai.

Dr Darmp Sukontasap, senior vice president of Tesco Lotus, said the July 3 elections would lead to renewed confidence among consumers, who are facing higher prices of food, with a record inflation of over 4 per cent.

"That is why we, at Tesco Lotus, felt the need to help our customers to better cope with the rising cost of living by launching a second Roll-Back programme with significant savings for them," he said.

Kudatara Nagaviroj, director of corporate affairs at Big C Supercentre, said that the July 3 election would have a positive impact on its sales in the third and fourth quarters of this year.

"We will cash in on the coming election with our 'bigger and better' concept. After the recent merger with Carrefour, we [big C] have now 105 hypermarket stores and are able to offer a variety of products to any segment of shoppers," he said.

Central Department Store (CDS) vice president for marketing Piyawan Leelasompop said the company has projected sales growth to be much higher in the third and fourth quarters of this year.

"We have achieved same-store growth of about 4 per cent year to date this year," said Piyawan. "We are targeting higher same-store growth at 5 per cent and 10 per cent respectively in the third and fourth quarters of this year."

Piyawan said that after the election, people would resume their normal life. She didn't expect further unrest or violent incidents to happen again as the country has already seen the worst.

The Mall Group's senior chief marketing officer Chamnarn Maytaprechakul said the group had got less benefit from the July 3 election as it had only one upcountry branch, in Nakhon Ratchasima.

He said that discount-store operators would be the ones to get immediate benefit from the higher spending power of local shoppers as they sell basic commodity goods and with many branches scattered throughout the country.

"For The Mall, which targets middle- to upper-middle class consumers, we expect to get some positive impact in the next three to six months," said Chamnarn.

Nat Jaritchana, senior vice president of Home Product Centre, the operator of the HomePro chain, said the coming election would help boost sales of hand tools for making banners and billboards for political parties.

He said that HomePro had launched a major discount campaign, "Super Shock Sales", to cash in on the coming election.

The campaign will be held from Thursday to June 19 this year and generate Bt2 billion sales for the company.

-- The Nation 2011-05-23

So to put this long drawn out diatribe into a nut shell " Forecasters have predicted that due to the usual large amount of vote buying at the grassroot level , there will be a lot more money for the poor to spend "

Why would there be a ' Rush ' to purchase more hand tools ?

Do not the people who make bill-boards etc not have all they require on a daily basis ?