Nixdorf in Europe

Abstract

The trend towards fewer and larger retail outlets, with the organisation centre often far away from the selling points; the doubling of the number of products sold in the last 10 years; the stagnation in turnover — all these have been the main forces behind the development of electronic data processing (and scanning in particular) in the retail trade. Europe hasn't been as quick off the mark as the USA in establishing itself in the scanning field, but all this is now changing. 1982 was the watershed, with Germany leading the way with 660 scanner PoS terminals in 73 self‐service stores. France comes next with 48 installations, followed by the UK with 42, Belgium with 39, 36 in the Netherlands, and 20 in Sweden. During 1982, too, almost 50% of the total number of systems now in place were installed. And in West Germany at least there's been no let up in 1983, with installations increasing by 71, to 144, and the number of scanner PoS terminals rising by 622, to 1,280. However, it wasn't just the large space users which were responsible for this surge forward: 35 of the 71 new installations were in supermarkets having a maximum of four checkouts. One computer company busy raking in the Deutschmarks, as well as Swiss Francs, pounds sterling, and some Scandinavian currencies, is the German based Nixdorf Computer. At a two‐day conference in Zurich, Axel Hass, Nixdorf's person in charge of sales for trade, restaurants and hotels, pointed out how, having made its name in the banking world from its inception in the 1950s, Nixdorf can now claim to be West Germany's market leader in laser‐scanning PoS systems, with 34% market share (equal to IBM here). Its number of installations worldwide has soared from 500 in 1975 to 14,000 in 1983, and in 1984 Nixdorf is confident this number will reach 25,000. Users now include German department and variety store groups, such as Karstadt, Dyckhoff and Kaufhof, the Spar voluntary chain, co‐ops, and Migros in Switzerland. But so far Nixdorf's push into the UK has been limited to a 50‐terminal system at the Calor Gas organisation, and an order for a non‐scanning system for a Scottish‐based retail chain. However, Nixdorf is obviously keen to make a deeper thrust into the UK and has set up a special group over here. The following two articles are based on papers presented at the Zurich conference. The first is a description of Nixdorf's first scanning exercise, for the German Rewe Group, which serves 7,930 independent outlets through 29 affiliated wholesalers. The second is a quite different and much smaller operation, for Mackay's whose headquarters are in Paisley in the west of Scotland. Nixdorf is providing a non‐scanning system for the company's 140 outlets scattered throughout the UK. Both the above operate out of retail units averaging under 3,000 sq m and demonstrate Nixdorf's flexibility, with its 8812/10 terminal system, to cater for the smaller as well as the larger retailer.

Citation

Sharples, S. (1984), "Nixdorf in Europe", Retail and Distribution Management, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 26-28. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb018214