Have the big supermarkets had their day ???

[Deleted User]

Hi just been reading online about how the bigger supermarkets are opening 'local' smaller stores to capture the smaller markets.Do you think that the mammoth stores have seen the light ,or are they just worrying about the way the shopping public are not being taken in by their urgings to shop 'til you drop with food.
I shop far less now than I used to and buy nearly all my stuff on the need, not want to, shopping list now.Doing this I have cut back on what I used to spend, and buy necessities rather than impulse buying stuff.

This month I am actually 'shopping from my food cupboards as I realised that I probably have enough to feed an army in there.Or is it that just folk are finding the price of food so high that we are all becoming more 'canny' shoppers and going back to shopping as we did before the advent of the big stores.A lot of my friends can't get to the out of town shopping parks because of transport,I can, as I still drive, but now prefer to buy smaller quantities than I used to, and I use more local smaller business's .My local g/grocer will happily chop a cabbage in half and sell it to you as he knows that others will come into his shop and buy the other half.
I can buy unwashed spuds in there, and if I only need four or five I can get smaller amounts.
I bought a couple last week, then when I got home I ran under the tap and had two reasonable sized spuds for jacket potato's for 29p as oppossed to 4 for a £1.00 in the bigger tesco's.
After all if you go to a bakers shop you can buy a couple of rolls and you don't have to buy 6 at a time

GreyQueen

Jackie0, I've long been watching the expansion of supermarkets in towns and cities I know well with disbelief.

As in, how much food do they think we can eat? How many other non-food items do they think we can consume?

What I think is happening now is that the sector has reached saturation point in the terms of big supermarket provision. It would have been inevitable anyway, the recession has just hastened it slightly. Their only way to survive is to poach custom from each other and to expand into the convenience store market and poach the little guy's "small basket" trade as well. What the Americans call the "mom and pop store".

There's also the aspect that a lot of us live alone and a huge aircraft hanger of a store on the edge of town isn't very suitable for how we live our lives. I know I do my shopping on foot and by bicycle, so all my shops are "little baskets".

What I expect to see in the coming years are chains going under or merging with each other. I don't necessarily see a renaissance for the small independant sector as a result, although I do shop in these kind of stores some of the time myself. F'rinstance, my indy greengrocer is very well informed about the trade and indies like him are presently accounting for only 3% of the greengrocery business.

I expect that the no-frills retailers will make out like bandits and some of the middle-market chains will have to decide whether to take themselves up or probably down-market to preserve market share. They might even do this regionally, such as having a sub-chain for an affluent region and a basics one for poorer areas. I'm guessing they'd probably do this by merger and acquistion, rather that dilute their "brand" by having some no-frills stores under the same name.

In the meantime, of course, there will be some bargains to be had as they fight for custom. I'm sure the MSE sector of the population will be right up there working the angles.

Tryingagainandagain

I saw the same story on the TV - it seems we are going back to shopping the way my mother did, small amounts every day as we need them.


I find it interesting the way pack sizes have grown. My mum used to buy small packs of washing powder and a quarter pound of cheese/cooked meats. We simply used less of everything I think.


We now have the enormous packs of everything, which I think encourages us to eat more, to be careless of waste and simply to consume more than we need.


It is a big advantage to the stores when we buy in bulk as we have paid for storing the stock they would otherwise have had to carry - they get the interest on the money (not so much at the moment but when interest rates are high...............)


This may be part of the solution to obesity problems - buying smaller amounts at stores we can walk to?

mags50_2

Have the big supermarkets had their day?

Hopefully.....yes!

Dozey_crow

I think that more people are wising up to the tricks of the big supermarkets and are tiring of having to put in so much effort to avoid being ripped off. For instance how many of us check prices on line or on foot and compare them, then we have to work out the unit price of an array of 'special offers', promotional packs or multibuys then compare to the unit prices of the'normal' pack sizes on the shelf.

Not to mention if the item is food then the nutritional value (s) of each needs to be checked against each 'smartprice' to top range to take value for money into account. The thing is that the difference is often pounds rather than pence and often make a difference... But it is time consuming.

I much prefer Aldi as if I wasn't mayo I have the choice of a squeezey bottle or a class jar in full fatty, light or extra light both are the same price.

As Jackio says about veg I can go to the market and get what I want rather than buying two packs for £2 when in honesty I only wanted 1\2 pack.

I would welcome a return to the old way of shopping.. be much easier for a start!

Lilyplonk

Many years ago, our small town centre had a Tesco AND a 'FineFare' - this is going back around 40yrs. One day Tesco changed suddenly to a 'Victor Value' - a downmarket offshoot of Tesco.

Victor Value didn't last very long and was soon sold off to become a KwikSave (ooooh whatever happened to them???).

When THAT eventually decided to quit our town centre (leaving an out of town one) it became a HomeBargains and is still going strong.


Think Tesco were kicking themselves though, as ASDA bought up a huge area of land, built a Supermarket, Car Park, Petrol Station AND provided a separate new Town Centre Library for the community. That was successful - although for a short while the store was downgraded to a 'cheapie' Asda Farm Store and we began to see some SmartPrice items creeping in. They then built a HUGE ASDA Superstore - first one ever with an upstairs and Travellator installed - on another plot of land.


I just think that the Big Supermarkets have noticed how many of us will use small local corner shops/minimarkets for whatever we've forgotten on a big shop - and want some of THAT action for themselves. That's why they're buying up empty pubs etc and establishing their own. They'll also 'come into their own' when bad weather strikes and people can only get out to local shops due to bad road conditions etc.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

I think now that more and more people are on even tighter budgets, they are only buying what they need, maybe going to a bigger supermarket to do main shop, and then using smaller shops to 'top-up'


and the main supermarkets have cottoned on to this, and are trying to get onto this section of the market too.


It could also be that there is many places where they can't build a big supermarket, without actually effecting another on of their stores locally.. I have 6 large tescos within travelling distance...

It will also look good for supermarkets to open smaller stores, within towns etc as it could be classed as them 'helping' to regenerate failing town and village centres etc..

lostinrates

Well.....

I'm the opposite. I hate the smaller supermarkets of the big chains. I use a big supermarket for efficiency and buy big packs in muliple of what I need that will keep ( e.g loo roll, washing powder, pasta, flour) and then buy fresh things as needed from other sources or supermarkets as required.

I like the variety only the bigger stores can give as we don't tend to eat a ' meat and two veg' sort of diet and still cannot find everything I want in big supermarkets or niche shops in the sticks so rely on DH bringing stuff home a weekends from London. Now postage gets more and more and ordering stuff in through a local shop isn't viable to get less commonly wanted things is expensive.

There are whole aisles of all supermarkets I skip out, and are almost alien to me, when I do veer down them I am astounded at the range ( and prices ) of stuff we don't buy.....

Lilyplonk

I have to admit to 'almost liking' my usual supermarket for shopping, and can spend ages in there, especially by the time I've chatted to people I know and been for a coffee .

Though, like lostinrates, there's many aisles that I don't even go down (alcoholic drinks, prepacked meat, tinned veg, motoring/diy for example). I don't very often go down the freezer aisles - unless I'm looking for Frozen Chips / Fish Portions/Fingers / Peas / Sweetcorn.

[Deleted User]

I shop with a rucksack and have a bus pass so always go in to town on the bus. We have a couple of huge out of town superstores here but I can't get a bus to either of them as there isn't one running from here so I am limited to where I can actually shop by where I can actually get to. I have a medium sized T*sco some 6 miles away and a small W*itrose and medium Mo**isons some 9 miles in a different direction and my nearest large store is a Co Op some 2 miles away but that along with the small branch we have here in the village is much too expensive for me to be able to use them for anything but milk and the occasional loaf of YS bread. I've definately changed the way I use supermarkets though, I go direct to the reduced sections first to see what is available, check the fresh meat and fish counters after that for offers or reductions and then set about finding own brand basic products if I need anything else. I always check M&S food for reductions and have taken to checking out the £ shops for food as well as everyday things like soap and toothpaste. I find that I can make my cash go several times as far by shopping around and getting the best priced items that are available but, I am retired and have the time to do this, something possibly not available to folks working full time or busy mums with younger children.

Callie22

I'm not sure that big supermarkets have had their day. If anything, I think that by opening more smaller stores they're capitalising on the fact that *most* people don't plan their food shopping and so are constantly popping out for top-up shops. They might not necessarily go to a big supermarket to do this but they'll spend just as much if they wander round a Sainsbury's Local with a basket, picking up the 'essentials'.

There's probably some really sophisticated psychology behind this in that supermarkets have noticed that people are spending less on their 'big' weekly shops, but their overall daily 'small' spends are going up - stuff like that's easily tracked with your nectar/club card. I bet there are loads of people who think 'well, I've got my weekly shop down to such-and-such', but who don't count the £5/£10 a day they spend on the top ups/a sandwich for lunch/a bottle of wine after work. I bet the expansion in smaller stores is one way of cashing in on these increased smaller spends.