Samenvatting

This research examines how Dutch border retailers are responding to business
opportunities from cross-border shoppers as a specific target group. Further on, it
describes shopping behaviour of German cross-border shoppers in the Netherlands.
Interviews about their marketing policy are conducted with four Dutch retailers
in the euregion rhine-meuse-north. The retailers are chosen according to their shop
location in the euregion in order to cover as many parts of the euregion as there
are represented in this research.
The cross-border shoppers were questioned with two different surveys: an
online version that answered general questions about reasons for and frequency
of shopping in the Netherlands and ‘keep’, ‘repel’, ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors as described by Spierings & van der Velde (2008). A second survey was conducted among shoppers in a city center that welcomes many border shoppers, in order to find out which specific shops were attractive to them.
Border retailers focus mostly on giving their customers a good product portfolio. They select products which they believe fit their target group. Some of the
retailers also analyse data from their customer service in order to find out whether
to include certain new products or not. Price is the most important factor they take
into account when they accept a new product in their shop.
Customers are product-driven and looking for lower prices than in their own
country, but they also see their shopping trip as a day out. This means that they
combine their visit to the cross-border shop with a visit to shops in the surroundings.
Nostalgia is another driver for shopping across the border, along with shopping
for other families and convenience in accessibility of the shops they want to visit.