Sainsbury recently opened a new £16m store in Selsdon, the first to open under the company’s new group chief executive Justin King.
The development had faced considerable opposition from a local MP and Croydon Council, which rejected the application on the grounds it would have a catastrophic effect on local transport.
The objections were overcome and the store opened in June. Despite its 25,000 sq ft size, it should have a reasonable weekly turnover.
CACI’s analysis reveals that the catchment has a strong fit to a typical Sainsbury shopper. The new shop takes the local Sainsbury store count to seven. More importantly, its store allows Sainsbury to compete with the dominant 46,000 sq ft Tesco Extra at Purley nearby and helps Sainsbury maintain an equal market share against Tesco.
The majority of the share of this new store will come from Tesco and Somerfield. Other supermarkets in the area include Asda, Safeway and Iceland, but these should feel little impact.
CACI predicts Selsdon will steal £280,000 a week from Tesco. It is Somerfield, already with a low market share, that will be hit most, suffering a loss of £221,000 a week from its two nearby stores.
Sainsbury will experience considerable cannibalisation across its other six stores but this can be justified when it helps compete on market share against Tesco. Sainsbury can expect it to fall in the top 30% of its stores based on turnover.
Given the number of other Sainsbury stores close by, CACI predicts the catchment for this new store will be fairly compact and the dominance of the Tesco Extra store to the west will restrain the catchment to the Selsdon area. The store is unlikely to attract people from far distances, but will make the most of the high density of households surrounding it.
The ACORN profile identifies that this tight catchment is heavily over-represented by Secure Families, making up 29% in the Selsdon catchment, twice as many as across the country as a whole. This is the group that is happy to shop at any of the top three supermarkets.
The second most dominant group is Struggling Families, making up 19%. These have a very good fit to the Tesco and Asda stores.
There is a weaker fit when comparing the catchment profile to Somerfield and that could accentuate the potential big turnover losses those stores are facing.
Somerfield loses out to a catchment profile that is more suited to the larger three supermarkets and also to the high number of scattered Sainsbury stores.