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Online businesses don't pay local taxes, Sainsbury's boss Justin King argues in a big CityAM interview spread. Unlike the web retail businesses, Sainsbury's  "pay business rates at a local level" and "employ people locally" and "pay people locally" and "they spend their earnings locally". "If we are seeing a shift in consumer behaviour towards purchasing online rather than their local store then the government will have to address that the tax system is being usurped by a change in behaviour," he adds.  The point to notice here is that connection of Sainsbury's with "local shop". It is spin. But very effective spin. As any independent retailers who have talked to their MPs about competition from multiples will know, the grocers are very successful at projecting the "local" benefits that they will bring. Perhaps 10 years ago this was true. But supported by a better supply chain, independent...

It was the stream of shoppers visiting Steve Archer’s new convenience store in Newcastle-under-Lyme last week that really underlined his point that sometimes local shopkeepers cannot see the opportunity under their noses. He had persuaded the landlord of two small closed shops to let him lease them, knock them together and provide a full convenience offering including off licence. Nearby retailers led a petition of their customers to oppose the off licence and lost. “Local people really like the idea of being able to walk to their shop, rather than travel to the supermarket,” Steve told me. I could see this was true with my eyes. Mr Archer’s message is pretty much the same as the one Justin King, the boss of Sainsbury, told the national media at a City dinner around the same time. Shoppers are going “back to the future”, Mr King said, making more frequent trips and putting fewer items in their baskets. There is a big opportunity, Ed Garner, communications director of Kantar Worldpanel,...

Last month's quarterly sales numbers for Sainsbury's provide an uncomfortable benchmark for local retailers - shoppers are not spending as much as they used to. Justin King, the managing director who has been built up as the saviour of Sainsbury's over the past few years, is starting to get negative press. City analysts are lining up to say sell. Clive Black of Shore Capital noted that "Sainsbury has done more to confirm the magnitude of the deceleration in consumer activity than any other recent update". In plain English, shoppers are spending less at a faster rate than expected. Or as Mr King said: "The change has been quite dramatic. The surprise is just how sudden that is." And how long. Shoppers stopped spending in January and were still not back in March. Like-for-like sales in his shops were down 0.8 per cent year-on-year. Shoppers were, on average, putting one less item in their basket when they did the weekly shop and buying it later on a ...