Tesco has claimed it is raising prices “a little bit less and a little bit later” than its rivals, as it battles to hang on to customers squeezed by the cost of living crisis.
Shares in Britain’s largest grocer dropped to their lowest level in six years after Tesco trimmed its profit forecasts for the year,
Maybe, you know, jus’ sayin’…..
If the same input inflation is leading to less output inflation than rivals then profits falling as against rivals is a possible outcome, no?
You’d think Tesco would be alright, but I think this is the recession that finally finishes off Marks and Sparks.
There’s nothing special about M&S anymore, their diehard fans in the Blue Rinse Brigade have sadly died, and younger middle class consumers are already switching to cheaper retailers.
I presume that Tesco are trying to retain customer loyalty and volume for the longer term, so I suppose the question is whether that will be sufficient to justify the lag in applying inflation now.
A year ago I traipsed around M&S looking to trousers. Out of hundreds on display, none in my size. So I abandoned them and went online. Before that the last time I went to M&S was to buy a new suit in 2008-ish. Again, nothing, so I traipsed out to Meadowhell. Even there it took hours to find something suitable. Retailers just seem to be hell-bent on killing off their customer base.
Maybe if the big name supermarkets concentrated less on saving Flipper, the Planet, pandering to vegans, reducing sait, fat, sugar, pack size and going organic, they may not lose customers… not to cost of living crisis, but customers who just want to shop not have a seminar on environmentalism and ‘healthy’ diet, and buy what they want not what others decide they should have to meet ideological ravings of the loony brigade – and so go to Lidl and Aldi.