Tesco boss Ken Murphy says Tesco is anticipating a bumper festive trading season, despite the grim economic and geo-political backdrop.
Murphy, who was speaking after the retailer announced strong sales growth for the first half of the year today, revealed Tesco’s consumer research and sales data were in stark contrast to the warnings from the prime minister and others of hard times ahead.
Tesco said sales grew by 4% to £31.5bn over the 26 weeks to 24 August, compared with the same period last year. Murphy said he expected the strong sales to continue based on its consumer insight.
“Whilst shoppers are not exactly doing cartwheels down the hallways they are in relatively good shape,” Murphy said. “We are seeing very resilient consumer sentiment.
“I don’t want to get carried away, but we’re seeing good results across our business..
“We’re gearing up for a good Christmas and we’re betting on a good Christmas.
“We’re buying up in terms of our volumes, we’re putting together a very strong trade plan. We’re very excited about it.”
Tesco saw Finest sales volumes grow by nearly 15 % in the period, with more than 20 million shoppers buying items from the range, which Murphy indicated would be a key part of its Christmas plans.
Murphy indicated that Tesco was well placed to take advantage of the troubles facing the hospitality sector, with many customers likely to cut down visits to restaurants and other out-of-home venues over Christmas, and instead look to trade up in store.
He also announced Tesco had broken its record of Clubcard members with more than 23 million in the UK, accounting for 83% of transactions.
He said loyalty pricing helped save customers up to £385 off their annual grocery bill.
Tesco, along with other supermarkets, faced criticism from the BBC’s Panorama programme last week over claims that its Aldi Price Match, available on more than 800 products, was misleading. The programme claimed some products were not of equal quality of that offered by the discounter.
But Murphy strongly denied the claims, saying the quality of the products in Aldi Price Match was “heavily scrutinised”.
He added: “It’s something we continue to see as a bedrock of our offer.”
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