Consumption: In the Grand-Est region, the crisis has changed the habits of cross-border workers
A cross-border cooperation area at the heart of Europe, the Greater Region comprises several territorial entities belonging to four countries: Germany, Belgium, France, and Luxembourg. This large cross-border area is characterized by several major flows of cross-border workers, with Luxembourg and the Saarland as the main destinations and Lorraine as the main “source.”
Béatrice Siadou-Martin, University of Montpellier; Colette Grandmontagne, University of Lorraine; Hélène Yildiz, University of Lorraine; Mathias Boquet, University of Lorraine; Nicolas Dorkel, University of Lorraine and Rachid Belkacem, University of Lorraine
These borders between Belgium, France, Germany, and Luxembourg are characterized by very large and growing flows of cross-border workers. Luxembourg alone attracts more than half of the cross-border workers in the Greater Region. The Luxembourg City metropolitan area is the top destination for cross-border workers residing in France, ahead of Geneva. In addition to the French working in the Grand Duchy, there are also Belgians and Germans. As a result, cross-border workers account for nearly 44% of Luxembourg’s labor force.
University of Luxembourg, map by M. Helfer
In mid-March, the temporary closure of borders and the introduction of border controls disrupted the daily lives of residents living near the border, both in terms of employment and their spending habits—which also determine their reasons for travel: food, clothing, leisure, equipment, etc. In Luxembourg, for example, the widespread shift to remote work made it painfully clear to various businesses just how much these employees contributed to their revenue.
Relocalized Consumption
Our survey, conducted during the March–April 2020 lockdown, shows that, typically, 25% of households in the Grand-Est region living within 25 km of a border regularly shop abroad for essential goods, and 31% do so occasionally.
Among these households, while 14% and 32% report no impact or a minor impact on their consumption, 35% and 18% of respondents report a moderate and significant impact, respectively.
The severity of the impact is also linked to the distance from the border. Those who report having been significantly impacted live, on average, 7.6 km from the border, compared with 12.6 km for those who report not having been impacted.
Above all, however, remote work—which became widespread and was widely adopted during the spring lockdown—led people to shift their shopping to locations closer to home, particularly when this was possible and there was sufficient local supply. The various patterns of consumption among cross-border commuters have been affected, as both impulse purchases and those linked to organized trips have declined along with the flow of workers.
Between Setback and Opportunity
In fact, crossing the border to work inevitably leads these workers to make convenience purchases, which are intended to make it easier for them to stock up on supplies. Marketing literature shows that consumers integrate their purchases into their daily routines: buying bread on the way to and from work, taking advantage of a trip to run an errand to stop by a clothing store, and so on.
Furthermore, while purchases of products taxed differently on either side of the border may be driven by a desire to optimize one’s budget, purchases motivated by hedonistic considerations (clothing, leisure activities) or by careful planning (cars, household appliances) highlight criteria such as quality or the complementary nature of the offerings. Consumers therefore do not hesitate to compare prices at retail outlets on both sides of the border. And this is without even considering the trade diversion caused by digitalization…
From a commercial perspective, caught between disruption and opportunity, the border has thus far provided fertile ground for the implementation of various consumer strategies. For their part, businesses’ location strategies have been based on traffic flow criteria—and no longer solely on the population density within the catchment area. However, if trends toward local consumption take hold as a result of the crisis, this factor could lose some of its significance.
Béatrice Siadou-Martin, Full Professor of Management Sciences, University of Montpellier; Colette Grandmontagne, Associate Professor, University of Lorraine; Hélène Yildiz, Associate Professor (HDR) in Management Sciences, University of Lorraine; Mathias Boquet, Associate Professor, University of Lorraine; Nicolas Dorkel, Research Engineer in Spatial Analysis, University of Lorraine and Rachid Belkacem, Lecturer in Sociology, University of Lorraine
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