It’s fashionable to be disparaging about Tesco as it struggles to regain market dominance in the UK and sheds overseas holdings like leaves in Autumn. But, it continues to be one of the most innovative grocers in the world. Notwithstanding…
It’s tough out there in the grocery retail trenches and commodity fruit and veg. is slap-bang in the firing line like so much cannon fodder. We blame bananas and milk ably aided and abetted by the hard discounters! We’re training…
UK supermarket chains continue to knock seven bells out of each other as they struggle to come to terms with hard discounter level prices. Even upmarket Waitrose is not immune and its “Pick Your Own Offers” gives loyal shoppers 20%…
As consumers emerge shell-shocked from their bunkers and household incomes tick up, grocery purchasing behaviour is still in recessionary defensive mode – savvy shoppers rule and price-matching programmes and promotions reduce the effectiveness of differentiation solely on price. Aldi and…
Quite a lot, really! But, first, we’ll front up – we’re both immigrants (British-born Hughes managed to slip into Canada back in the 1970’s and Spaniard Flavian legged it to London in 2012). As we all know from reading the…
We keep banging on about the havoc caused by the hard discounters in the UK grocery market. Well, that’s because they are very disruptive and will continue to be so and so will others! Back in 2011, Sainsbury’s launched its…
Two weeks ago (May 6th), David Tyler Chairman of Sainsbury’s making the best of a bad job opined “our profitability and sales have shown good resilience relative to our listed peers”! In short, JS had lost less ground in sales…
Back in the late-1990’s, dismal days for Sainsbury’s, the supermarket chain launched a high profile advertising campaign using John Cleese eccentrically stalking the aisles shouting about the great value of Sainsbury’s products. Buoyant, bumptious Tesco were beating them up on…
Fifty three years ago (1962), Chubby Checker had a hit parade smash success with “Limbo Rock” which had the memorable strap line “How Low Can You Go?!”. It sounds like the clarion call of the UK grocery industry this year!…
The Big Supermarket Boys are under tremendous pressure these days, not least trying to slow the rampaging growth of the hard discounters, Aldi and Lidl and the irritating nibbling of the pound stores. Pre-recession, hard discounters picked up a small…
Supermarkets in your pocket. 