“This industry’s full of jargon,” said Asda CEO Andy Clarke today, referring to the UK grocery business.

Clarke was speaking to a room full of journalists in the retailer’s convivial albeit cosy offices above Carnaby Street, delivering the news that Asda had seen sales growth of 1.8% in Q1.

Clarke’s statement was not exactly controversial, and the comment was received without so much as a murmur of disagreement. Eyebrows were raised however – at least by this journalist – when Clarke said, responding to a question from the floor regarding Asda’s strategy in the convenience market, that the retailer was already very much in the convenience business and was even reinventing the term.

Despite its purchase of 136 smaller-format Netto stores in May 2010, Asda has largely avoided opening convenience stores and has no stores smaller than 3,000 sq ft.

“The term convenience has now changed; it is convenient to order on an smartphone, it is convenient to order on a tablet, it is convenient to have your shopping delivered to a transport hub – we’re talking to universities that have approached us asking us to deliver to campuses,” said Asda’s retail director Mark Ibbotson, expanding on Clarke’s claim.

“The word convenience is being reinvented for the customer and we’re reinventing it.”

Dictionary-level semantics aside, what does the word ‘convenience’ mean in the context of grocery?

Clarke and Ibbotson’s point was that innovations such as online shopping and the ability to ‘click and collect’ perhaps supersede smaller stores as a way to make shoppers’ lives easier.

At the same meeting Clarke was keen highlight that Asda charges the same price for an item across all its stores regardless of size. He said Asda has a growing price gap with other retailers – “and that’s from their core stores; imagine what that gap is for a local or convenience store – we’re talking a big gap,” Clarke said.

Certainly, paying three times the price for an onion from a smaller store than the price you pay from the same retailer’s superstore – I mention no names – feels more irritating than convenient despite it being located on the way home. But I have done it more times than I have shopped on my smartphone.

Asda’s recent announcement of a £700m capital investment in its multichannel offering – the highest growth part of its business – is evidence that Clarke and presumably Walmart are willing to bet that may change.

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