Supermarkets
protecting their
position
At a time when price is important to all consumers, how do supermarkets use their brand to win new business?
Tesco’s extensive store estate has meant that it is often the nearest. The exit of the Safeway and Kwik Save brands and Co-op’s recent acquisition of Somerfield has meant that now £3.00 out of every £4.00 we spend on food is going to one of the top five supermarkets.
As these players have extended their locations and formats, shoppers are more likely to have a choice of all of the top five supermarkets near them. Convenience thus becomes less of a defining factor and the decision of where to shop is more brand related with values and reputation coming strongly into play.
The positioning map of the top nine supermarkets shows how each retailer has carved a distinctive positioning within a core set of customers. Tesco is market leader by a long lead, but as market leader it has the widest customer base, encapsulating both the affluent and the budget shoppers – it therefore has to convey different messages to different sections of its customer base. M&S and Waitrose, with a narrower customer group, can keep to variations on a single message: quality. Indeed, Waitrose’s main shoppers value it for quality above everything else (62% mention this – well above the sector score of 16%). However 80% of its disloyal shoppers cited price as the main deterrent from shopping there.
