Grim news for Sainsbury’s as sales continue to fall
While the big supermarkets here in Ireland duke it out for a bigger slice of the sales figures, the battle rages on in the UK too.
Print10 June 2015
Sales at UK supermarket Sainsbury’s have fallen once again with the publication of Kantar’s latest sales figures. The retail analysis agency shows a drop in sales at Sainsbury’s for the sixth straight quarter.
The Belfast Telegraph reports that store sales results (excluding fuel) for the 12 weeks up to June 6th were in fact worse than expected, down 2.1% – compared to 1.9% in the previous three-month period. The news comes as a furhter blow to Sainsbury’s new chief executive Mike Coupe, who took over the post last July. Back in November, he unveiled a wide-ranging plan to fight back against falling UK food prices, competition from the other major supermarkets and also increasing pressure from discounters Aldi and Lidl, by introducing price cuts to 1,100 items and improvements in quality to 3,000 own-brand products.
In response to the latest news, Mr. Coupe vowed to “match whatever our competitors throw at us.”
Ken Odeluga, a senior market analyst at www.cityindex.co.uk called the news “disappointing,” adding that a potentially greater worry for investors than the actual results were increasing signs that its measures to regain market share had failed to show much effect in the first quarter of 2015.
“At this point,” Mr. Odeluga said, “it’s worth reminding ourselves that Sainsbury’s, like its major supermarket peers, is now dealing in such marginal sales values that we must take comparable performance with a pinch of salt.
“But if Sainsbury’s is making progress in recapturing consumer loyalty, that progress is currently not easy to detect with the naked eye,” he said.
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