Multi-format pricing policy: hypermarkets, neighborhood stores, curbside pickup, and online marketplaces—one pricing schedule or several?
Fabrice Decroo
Consulting Director
August 21, 2026
72% of prices are exactly the same between online and brick-and-mortar stores at major multichannel retailers (American Economic Review, 2017)—so the widespread price discrepancy is not justified. What is justified: a common policy (rules, objectives, protected KPIs) broken down into pricing grids targeted at formats with genuinely different costs or uses—with curbside pickup (32% of French households) and online marketplaces leading the way.
Today, a typical French retailer operates, under a single brand, a hypermarket, one or more neighborhood store formats, a curbside pickup service, and often a presence on an online marketplace. Each format has its own cost structure, its own shopping patterns, and its own level of customer price comparison.
Should you use a single pricing structure to maintain consistency, or a separate structure for each format to stay profitable? The answer is neither—as this guide explains in detail.
Why a Single Pricing Structure Can't Survive in a Multi-Format Environment
The argument in favor of a single pricing structure is always the same: the consistency perceived by the customer. It’s a valid argument—until you compare it to the reality of costs. A drive-through location incurs order-preparation costs that a hypermarket does not; a marketplace charges a commission that the company’s own channel does not. Applying a strictly identical price across the board amounts to sacrificing margins on the most expensive channels or overcharging on the least expensive ones.
This guide is part of a series on retail pricing policies.
The real constraints imposed by each format
- Hypermarket — high foot traffic, intense price competition among a core group of visible products. This is often where the overall price image is determined.
- Convenience — smaller shopping cart, impulse purchases. Genuine price sensitivity, but less consistent.
- Drive — specific order fulfillment costs, often higher average basket size. A distinct business model in its own right, not just a store without sales staff.
- Marketplace — platform commission, direct comparison with other sellers. The price is partially beyond the retailer's direct control.
The Real Number: Are Prices Really That Different Across Channels?
72% —that is the proportion of cases where the price is exactly the same between a retailer’s website and its physical store, based on a sample of 56 major multichannel retailers in 10 countries—and any price difference, when it exists, is concentrated mainly in drugstores and office supplies, not in food or electronics (American Economic Review, Cavallo, 2017).
The real issue, then, is not to justify a broad, across-the-board discrepancy, but to precisely calibrate the targeted discrepancies—which are justified by genuinely different costs or uses—with “drive” and “marketplace” at the top of the list.
Drive-through, a format that’s already a major force in France
32% —that is the percentage of French households that regularly use curbside pickup for their grocery shopping, a channel that has seen its revenue grow by 8.7 billion euros over the past ten years to become a cornerstone of the French food retail sector (FEVAD, 2025).
A channel that reaches nearly one-third of French households cannot be treated as a mere extension of the physical store. Its cost structure and how it is used for shopping warrant a separate pricing structure—provided that it remains consistent so as not to create inconsistencies perceived by customers who switch between curbside pickup and in-store shopping.
A common policy, differentiated pay scales
- Establish a common policy —the same rules, the same objectives by category, and the same core set of protected KVIs for all formats.
- Apply a pricing grid by format within a limited scope —only those items where the cost or usage actually differs warrant an exception.
- Understanding the extent of the gap —a gap that is too wide erodes the trust of multichannel customers.
- Document and track every deviation —never an uncontrolled byproduct of siloed organizations.
The Specific Case of the Marketplace
The marketplace is the only format where the retailer does not have complete control over the rules of the game—commissions, the algorithm for product placement, and direct and immediate comparison with other sellers. Without explicit rules, the marketplace becomes the channel where prices are set independently of the overall pricing policy, whether out of an excess of caution or an excess of convenience.
At Booper —the Booper MPS platform allows you to configure channel-specific pricing rules—for stores, curbside pickup, and marketplaces—while maintaining a unified pricing policy managed from a central location. GENIUS Monitoring tracks discrepancies across channels to ensure that no deviations go unnoticed.
Multi-format governance: Who resolves discrepancies between channels?
Without a cross-functional owner, each channel optimizes its own local performance—the drive manager maximizes the channel’s margin, the e-commerce manager maximizes conversion, and the hypermarket manager maximizes price competitiveness. Together, without coordination, they create discrepancies that customers perceive as pure inconsistency. See also the article in this series on price alignment strategy.
A multi-format approach does not require a single, rigid pricing grid, nor does it require independent, inconsistent pricing grids: it requires a common policy, applied judiciously where cost or usage truly justifies it. To build this architecture with our teams, learn about our MPS solution —modular pricing by channel.
FAQ
No, strictly speaking, but it’s not a completely independent pricing structure based on format either. Best practice is to define a common policy and then adapt it into differentiated pricing structures based on each channel’s cost structure and level of comparison.
Less than you might think. A study of 56 major multichannel retailers in 10 countries shows that prices are the same between websites and physical stores in 72% of cases.
The drive-through combines a logistics cost structure that differs from that of the store with a different shopping pattern (planned shopping trips, higher average basket size)—two differences that justify a separate pricing structure.
By establishing explicit rules about what can vary and what must remain consistent with the overall policy. Without these rules, the marketplace becomes a channel that is out of control.
A designated owner of the multi-format policy—separate from the operational managers of each channel—who has an overview of the consistency of pricing.
It exists everywhere, but its complexity is particularly pronounced in France, where hypermarkets, neighborhood stores, curbside pickup, and online marketplaces have historically coexisted, often under the same brand.
Also in this series
- Retail Pricing Policies: A Guide to Choosing the Right Strategy
- Price Alignment Strategy: When to Follow the Market, When to Deviate from It
Sources: Cavallo, “Are Online and Offline Prices Similar?”, American Economic Review, 2017 · FEVAD, “Analysis of the E-commerce Market for Food and Grocery Products (PGC-FLS) 2025.”
Lowering a price almost always leads to higher sales—that’s never the issue. The real question is whether the additional volume generates enough profit to offset the profit lost on each unit already sold. The answer depends on two figures that are rarely considered together: the product’s markup rate and its actual price elasticity.
In the retail sector, a product’s profitability is never fully reflected in its selling price. Part of it is determined on the shelf (the front-end margin), while another part is negotiated separately with the supplier, off the sales receipt (the back-end margin). Managing one without the other means managing an incomplete picture of profitability—and often, without realizing it, an underestimated one.
The margin, markup, and margin rate do not measure the same thing, and confusing them distorts all the resulting pricing decisions. Once these definitions and their formulas are established, the real question becomes an operational one: how can you maintain an accurate view of your margin when it changes every week, product by product, rather than recalculating it once a quarter in a spreadsheet?