J Sainsbury is struggling to accommodate changing shopping habits in Britain.
Its new CEO, Mike Coupe, said: "The supermarket industry has changed more rapidly in the last three to six months than any time in my thirty years in the industry."
He has warned that sales will continue to slide away for the rest of this year, having fallen already for last three consecutive quarters.
In his estimation, shoppers have never been "savvier or shopped around more". He felt they had also been tempted by great increases in shopping outlets. "There would be two or three shops [nearby] two or three years ago, now there are four or five."
Consumers are increasingly taking advantage of shopping options on the internet as well as turning to discounters Aldi and Lidl.
Another trend is to shop more often but bringing home less in an effort not to get bamboozled into ‘special offers’ and to put an end to throwing out excess food purchases.
Additionally, Sainsbury, along with other retailers, is having to come to terms with lower prices caused by lower commodity prices, due to healthy harvests, and with the recent price war launched to grab back shoppers.
The food retailer, which is the third largest in the UK, will be undertaking a strategic review, but had already pledged to open its own discount chain by opening Netto stores as well as lowering prices on basic food items.
