Morrisons: food for thought

**A myriad of names come to mind when you think of supermarkets. From the trailblazers Safeway and Sainsbury’s, the former of whom first opened their supermarkets during the great depression, to the current kings of the crop Tesco, not forgetting, of course, the high end stores Waitrose and M&S, lying far from the sphere of student spending.**

In its current predicament, Morrisons is more of an afterthought. Indeed it is in serious danger of becoming the new Woolworths of the high street; without a niche, a target market or indeed a hope.

One would be fooled into thinking supermarkets are nigh on invincible – former strugglers Waitrose have blossomed in recent years. The ethos of the public, however, now that former giants of home entertainment, HMV and Blockbusters, have bitten the dust, is no longer one of immortality. The three words on everyone’s lips are “Who is next?”

In fact supermarkets are fast becoming less and less about food retail. A Mintel report from November of last year identified “less than half of Tesco’s sales came from food” and went on to identify Morrisons as the only supermarket “a long way behind” in non-food development; it has no online proposition whatsoever. It was further identified in Mintel’s 2012 Online Grocery Report that “31 percent of Morrisons shoppers shop online”. But it can’t be with Morrisons, so by not moving with the times they are losing nearly a third of potential customers.

{{quote In its current predicament, Morrisons is more of an afterthought quote}}

Another big development in the supermarket industry is one of so-called ‘C-stores’ (Convenience Stores) – as people are more reluctant to travel to shop, C-stores such as ‘Express’ (Tesco), ‘Local’ (Sainsbury’s) and ‘Simply Food’ (M&S) have appeared. Asda and Waitrose generally aim to provide smaller stores anyway so there is no need for drastic development. Again, Morrisons is the supermarket out on a limb.

There were rumblings of a possible takeover of Costcutter in the summer of 2012. Morrisons, however, decided to contract logistics operators Wincanton, rather than the Costcutter owners, Bibby Line Group, to run its C-store distribution centre. This left many experts scratching their heads as such an acquisition would have gone some way towards bridging the sizeable gap between Morrisons and their competitors.

Many have suggested Morrisons’ woes date back to the merger with Safeway nearly a decade ago. In order to integrate the two businesses they decided upon a new trading format which was neither here nor there and ended up losing them both sets of customers.

There was, however, a period of fruitfulness under chief executive Marc Bolland, but that was due in part to the rough patch Asda experienced. Indeed, Morrisons’ recent downturn has coincided with the resurgence of a fresh-faced Asda outfit.

Morrisons have tried to combat the poor appearance of their clothing range; the appointment of former Peacocks MD as their first director of clothing has been widely seen as a good move. All of this raises questions over whether the new Leamington site will lay the foundations for future domination for Morrisons, or pave the way to its destruction. Here’s to hoping the store will be worth the wait.