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Post by a more piratey game on Oct 4, 2014 22:29:43 GMT
The big four supermarkets are seeing profits nosedive, and they can’t just blame Lidl and Aldi. Perhaps we’re all realising that big-box, one-stop shopping is a bit miserable the new Sainsbury’s chief executive, Mike Coupe, put it: “The reality is that the market has changed more rapidly in the last three to six months than I’ve seen in my 30 years in the industry.” And Sainsbury’s isn’t even the company most in trouble. Both Tesco and Sainsbury’s have been establishing themselves on the high street for years. Their products have become more accessible to local shoppers. My hunch is that without these smaller stores, the giants would have lost much more market share, but lost less profit, too. The companies expanded in search of market dominance. Instead, their smaller stores have enabled us to make shopping for food a small part of some other excursion – to meet a friend for a drink, walk the dog, go to the hairdresser or the gym, go – heaven forfend – to the butcher, the baker or the candlestick maker as well. And to the cafe or restaurant. There is an underlying paradox in the way these stores have hit a wall so hard. Their huge scale, and their fierce competition, supposedly so good for the consumer, has in fact rendered them unattractive to the consumer, because the consumer is also a person. h ttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/03/uk-big-supermarkets-sowed-seeds-own-decline
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Post by chelt_gas on Oct 4, 2014 22:40:41 GMT
The supermarkets have also failed to realise that their suppliers, employees, consumers and communities are also people with conscience and emotion. When people are exploited in whatever form then it's inevitable the system will change and it is now we are seeing that. UK Farmers have been hit hugely, these are the farms that have been established far longer that Tesco yet due to the prevailing market they have almost become slaves to the supermarkets. The farming community is very large and no wonder has reacted to this in attitude. 'Employees' have been taken on zero contract hours - these are people with family commitments yet again the supermarkets, with their private jets, banks and mobile networks, deem the penny is more important that the person. Consumers have been disregarded as returning sheep that will perform the same function in spending irrespective of what products are on offer, consequently we have been buying horse thinking it's pork, exploited to buying BOGOF s*** and indirectly paying more for our shop as the closed economy of the supermarkets closes out competition. Then we have our Communities - Supermarkets buying up land preventing development, supermarkets forcing closure of Butchers, Bakers, Local Pubs and then springing up in town centres becoming this pseudo town centre lacking any emotion (see Bradley Stoke).
Still, we obviously want Sainsbury's to pay for the Mem but I would go there unless I really had to. The irony is the government has been fawning over these moguls for years when really they should be looking at their tax liabilities a bit closer. I for one have yet to come across a Tesco Express in the British Virgin Isles.
The irony is that with the internet people have more choice, can shop anywhere, for any thing at any time. Surely, the internet is the 'super' market and not an environment where there is in fact only one seller? The supermarkets are certainly getting nervous and it is the real super 'market' that is the undoing of the supermarket.
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Post by a more piratey game on Oct 6, 2014 9:45:32 GMT
I'm thinking that the Sainsbury's management are in quite a panic (though not bad enough, like Tesco, to cook the books), and that may present opportunity as well as threat to us
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Post by Curly Wurly on Oct 6, 2014 10:52:55 GMT
I'm thinking that the Sainsbury's management are in quite a panic (though not bad enough, like Tesco, to cook the books), and that may present opportunity as well as threat to us I'm starting to think Coupe is not up to his new job.
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