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Supermarkets warned over future sales

Retail superstores have been told that they face just five more years of dominance in the grocery sector, as discounters and online sales offering enhanced content take a larger slice of the market.

The warning comes following  industry analysis by the Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD). The trade body stated that sales from bricks and mortar stores will drop by 4% in the next half a decade. That is despite an expected increase of 16% in overall grocery sector sales in the same time period.

Online sales are themselves, according to the IGD research, set to rise by nearly 120% in five years’ time. Its boss, Joanne-Denney-Finch, explained that since consumers were now eager to use multi-platforms to do their shopping, stores were becoming increasingly overlooked:

“Shoppers now expect grocery retailing to organise itself around their lives rather than building their routines around store opening hours. They expect to buy whatever they want, any time, anyplace in the most convenient way to them.”

To minimise the detrimental impact to them, supermarket retailers are advised to tackle the online issue head on.

Last to the party in this regard is Morrisons, which has only recently started taking online orders and deliveries. However, its command of social and online content is impressive to us here at Pressroom.

There is a great emphasis on imaginative content, with a more informal and fun approach than many companies are comfortable stomaching. It also has games and competitions on a regular basis.

It fields complaints through the use of these channels too of course, but tackles them honestly and openly as all firms big and small should be doing.

This has given Morrisons a significant share of 17% of the social chatter on supermarkets, third in the list to Waitrose and Sainsbury’s respectively, which was considerably higher than fifth-placed Tesco and Asda at six.

Steven Morris

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