Page 56 - HW June NEW 2022

global eyes
moving out...
Time was when almost every UK town centre had a Marks & Spencer (M&S).
But now, reinforced by changing shopping habits, already busy working on continuing to turn its business around after years of decline, the chain is moving out of many town centres.
Last year’s results showed a 55.6% surge in online sales. However, in-store sales were negative 11.2%, even at the same time as food sales were +10.1%.
Having seen big increases in online sales particularly for clothes and homeware, M&S has said this shift to online shopping during the pandemic has reinforced a need to scale down its physical retail space.
On top of which, with town centres being less frequented, Marks & Spencer has started relocating many shops from older, multi-floor buildings with sub-optimal access and parking to the edge of towns.
With a dozen plus new full-line
stores and 40 new food stores planned for the next three years, some 100+ existing large-scale sites will close and/ or relocate as the chain concentrates on fewer, better locations.
M&S’ Steve Rowe is reported as saying that the chain is simply “moving with the customer, where the customer is working and shopping” and that
the chain has to rebalance its bricks & mortar portfolio, especially with plans for more of a bias towards food.
https://corporate.marksandspencer.com/
Will UK consumers look for the enviro-label – or the price ticket?
Marks & Sparks is
HAVING ALREADY LED an industry-
wide approach to make it easier for
UK consumers to use and understand nutrition labels, grocery analyst the Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD) and four UK FMCG retailers are now trialling environmental labels, as the food industry moves one step closer to developing a harmonised environmental labelling scheme.
Designed to test consumer understanding of environmental labelling, the trials are the latest phase of a workstream kicked off by IGD at the end of last year, to mobilise the food industry to develop a coordinated approach to environmental labelling.
The Co-op, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and Tesco are now testing prototype labels, initially in a virtual reality environment, to see how a range of invited customers respond, before looking to implement in-store.
The virtual trials will be used to evaluate consumer awareness and understanding of the proposed environmental label, as well as evaluate the impact of point-of-sale (POS) communications and how to optimise them.
IGD’s earlier work on voluntary front of pack nutritional labelling has already proven successful, with almost 80%
of UK shoppers surveyed recognising that simple on-pack colour coding can be used to compare products or as a shortcut to make healthier choices.
However, set against all this is the fact that UK household debt continues at above pre-pandemic averages, according to Bank of England data.
As a result, and with 40% of UK shoppers forecast to be in fuel poverty by the end of the year, IGD admits that shoppers will be focusing more on value for money in the coming months than shopping sustainably.
IGD CEO Susan Barratt says: “Shoppers are having a hard time of it right now.
“We know from our ShopperVista data that sustainability is an important topic to shoppers, but the cost of living crisis is already impacting the trade-offs between affordability and sustainable shopping.”
Nevertheless, she says, there is a window of opportunity for the FMCG sector: “While we can see this shift in behaviours starting to take effect, it’s still early enough in the day for industry to really engage on the issue and take steps to show shoppers that sustainable shopping doesn’t have to come at a price premium.”
www.igd.com
54 NZHJ | JUNE 2022
MORE AT www.hardwarejournal.co.nz