Justin King was clear on why Sainsbury’s got the impressive results it did - Brand Match.
With price matching now so pervasive that even Waitrose is going toe to toe with Tesco, it seems hard to believe Sainsbury’s only took its voucher scheme nationwide at the back end of last year.
The other headline from today’s grand unveiling came from Sainsbury’s putting the brakes on its expansion plans. At least, that’s one way of looking at it. Just not how Justin sees it.
“It was a once in a lifetime opportunity three years ago to grow our space because the property market was in a very poor state,” he said today.
“So we stepped up our growth to 7% for two years. Because of this success, we extended it to a third year. The following year” - that’s 2012-13 he’s now talking about, in case you’ve lost count - “we’re targeting 5% growth, but that will still be our fourth biggest-ever year. It just so happens that our biggest three were before that.”
Got that? So Sainsbury’s is not slowing down, just going less quickly than it was before. Hmm.
King’s promise to increase retail space by 5% a year for the next five years might not constitute a ceasefire in the space race, but it’s an eye-catching move coming the month after Tesco reached a similar conclusion.
If you want to know where exactly that leaves things, our latest annual Grocery Retail Structure report will be in next week’s edition.
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