Kirkel – April 17, 2008. Praktiker is reversing the price spiral and thereby sending a reassuring message against inflation fears: this year, prices for the core assortments available at the 242 German Praktiker stores will be reduced across the board. The first round with 100 distinct price reductions on wood, paint and construction materials will start on April 18. The customers will on average benefit by around 13 percent.

By the close of 2008 the prices of a total of around 1,200 selected articles that are in the particular focus of our customers will have been permanently reduced. With this move, Praktiker is raising its profile as the price leader in the German DIY sector. However, this price reduction wave is not to be seen as a departure from but rather as complementary to our successful promotional campaigns (“20 percent on everything – except pet food“). The latter will remain an integral part of Praktiker’s price-aggressive marketing mix but their frequency will be appreciably reduced to the benefit of permanent low prices and other promotion activities. “At Praktiker, the customers are to have the certainty that they can buy good quality at the best possible prices not only during the discount campaigns“, said Pascal Warnking who is responsible for Marketing on the Management Board of Praktiker. According to Warnking this is all the more important “in times where rising costs of living are fueling inflation fears and curbing consumer spending“.

The price reductions will be accompanied by a series of TV commercials that starts on April 18 and highlights the topic of price leadership in a new, refreshing form. The campaign was realized by the Hamburg-based agency Lukas Lindemann Rosinski (LLR).