nickshanagher

The Sun's execellent City page, otherwise known as the "page you can trust", unveiled the High Noon headline this week after some stinking results posted by the Co-op. It quoted Peter Marks, its chief executive, as having said that people were cutting back on food for the first time in his working life. "Co-op profits dive triggers panic," suggested the Sun. But so too did the resignation of Steve Jobs, Heineken's announcement of sales falls in the first half of its current financial year, and any number of other corporate events. In a sense the Co-op's pain should be welcome as it confirms the story that the Kantar Worldpanel sales estimates have been telling us every month - the Co-op is losing market share. Local shopkeepers collectively are doing better than the Co-op, which means its 3.6 per cent like-for-like fall in sales (at a time when grocery inflation is nearly 5 per cent) should be your bottom end benchmark. Our village is served by a Co-...

My local Co-op c-store managed for a period of two week's to offer the same product at two different price points by two different tills. When I took the photographs, the sales assistant ran the 75p product through the till and it read £1.02. This means either no-one picked up a product from the 75p display in two weeks or no-one noticed that they were charged 27p more for the gum! Either way, the picture shows the power of clear labelling and bar codes in creating confidence that the price is correct - even if it is not.

Writing in the Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie, recounts how he took part in a television discussion about the links between obesity and poverty, when a fellow panelist said to him: "It's all right for you, shopping at Waitrose". Mr MacKenzie then defends his choice of supermarket by saying it is the nearest to where he lives and as "any food retailer will tell you - thanks to their extensive research - no customer wants to travel more than one and a quarter miles to shop. It's why supermarkets build more and more stores". If he is correct, then Waitrose must locate its shops where there are fewer obese people - and as it adds more stores then it will have more "problem" shoppers, where I use the term "problem" loosely. Research by Kantar Worldpanel shared with me by Ed Garner before Christmas plots the major supermarkets and independent shops on to a graph where the two axis are the percentage of upmarket ABC1 shoppers and the relative numbe...

The Sun devoted 34 words on its business page to talk up the latest quarterly results for "independent" symbol group Spar. Its 2583 outlets achieved a 3.1 per cent rise in sales in the quarter to the end of July compared to last year - "in contrast to a fall at the rival Co-op chain", added The Sun. Industry data shows that around 30 per cent of the Spar universe are multiple outlets but as it markets itself as Britain's biggest group of independent neighbourhood stores there are clearly lessons for other local shops. The Co-op has spent billions in its aim to dominate the local shops market but clearly is being outperformed. Spar gives four reasons for its success: a substantial increase in the numbers of promotions, up 28.8 per cent year on year building its own label range, up 4.4 per cent improving its fresh food offering, up 3.9 per cent redeveloping its wine portfolio, up 3.5 per cent. The first two of these trends are evident in most local shops,...