Nerve centre of German consumerism

FINDING GERMANY: PART 4:Hassloch is ideal for market research, having been dubbed Germany's most average town

THE SUPERMARKET looks normal, it smells normal with its pong of bread and vegetables, and it even sounds normal, with Neil Diamond pining for Sweet Carolineover tinny speakers.

But this is no regular supermarket, and those foil-wrapped yoghurt-muesli slices in the refrigerator are the proof.

Each 39 cent slice of chilled sugar and oat flakes is just one step from the big time. As is the toothpaste in the nearby drug store, hoping its “special anti-ageing formula” will distinguish it from the 61 others that are on the shelf.

These prospect of these products being rolled out nationally hangs on the verdict of shoppers here in Hassloch, Germany’s most average town.

First mentioned in 773 AD as Hasalaha, the town of 21,000 people in the southwestern Pfalz region near Alsace was identified in 1986 by the GfK market research agency as “Deutschland in Klein” – Germany on a small scale.

“We have just the right number of young people, old people, families, singles,” says Wittraud Kiesl (49), returning her trolley outside the supermarket. “It’s a strange feeling being the average German – not that we think about it until someone comes asking.”

Hassloch is remarkably, unspectacularly German. There’s a small paved square before the town hall – a building that is functional to the point of negligence – and the obligatory, joyless water feature out front.

Everyone cycles, the streets are narrow, and the houses are a mix of traditional half-timber, 19th century stone and the concrete hand of the 1960s and 1970s.

Inside one of these boxy modern structures, behind net curtains, is the nerve centre of the GfK’s Orwellian-sounding “behaviour management” study.

Every day, participating shoppers in 3,400 Hassloch households – a third of the town’s total – present at the supermarket till a card similar to a loyalty club card. Their purchase information is stored, telling companies how new products are selling, and whether new strategies for older products are having the desired effect.

“Every product that was tested successful here first has never failed elsewhere,” says Bettina Bartholomeyzik, field manager of GfK. On the other hand, some 40 per cent of products introduced in Hassloch never get a national roll-out.

Downstairs from her office, an apartment living room has been converted into a small television studio with two rows of televisions, a console and mainframe computers.

“We chose Hassloch in 1986 because the town was a statistical reflection of the German population, and because it was one of the first areas to have cable television,” explains the GfK manager.

From this studio, special spots for test products are interpolated seamlessly into regular advertisement breaks – but only in Hassloch. In addition, Hassloch testers get specially printed magazines with targeted advertisements.

“I’m proud to be able to exert a bit of power as a consumer,” says Bettina Finco (48), in her sunny living room.

Finco has been involved in the “behaviour scan” since the beginning – first at home with her parents, and since 1995 with her own family. Finco describes herself as a “proud brand shopper”, who sticks to tried and trusted names and never switches to new products unless forced.

“I notice nothing unusual when I go shopping; I haven’t time to go hunting for new products,” she says. “Of course nobody wants to describe themselves as average – everyone wants to be more – but in a statistical sense, for GfK, I suppose it’s fine that we are average Germans.” So what does average mean for her and her neighbours in Hassloch? Straightforward but conservative, she says; outward-looking, but not always the most broad-minded.

Week by week, purchase by purchase, Hassloch residents are doing their bit for German unification in a way no one ever intended 20 years ago.

“Tastes of eastern Germans have changed in such a way in the last 20 years that we no longer see any major differences with westerners in the big brand articles,” says Göran Seil, GfK research manager. “What doesn’t work here won’t work in Germany.” Of course Hassloch has changed with the times, too, remaining statistically relevant.

“We’ve more older people, a lot more single-parent households, not to mention people who think buying some product or other will make them happier,” says Karin, a 58-year-old local woman, over a cup of tea. She doesn’t participate in the GfK project because she doesn’t want her habits recorded, but she’s proud of the endeavour all the same. “We’re a small region here in the Pfalz, but we’re a bloody-minded lot who get our own way,” she says, citing the example of Helmut Kohl, who was Germany’s chancellor for 18 years and from nearby Ludwigshafen.

Once a man from the Pfalz dominated Germany’s politics, and now a Pfalz town dominates its supermarkets. Hassloch is Germany’s clearing house for homogenisation.