Sale of Tesco’s Clubcard business to WPP on the verge of collapse September 27, 2015 Tesco is likely to be forced to give up on the sale of its loyalty card business Dunnhumby as talks with WPP look set to collapse. The advertising agency has struggled to agree a price, according to the Sunday Times. Tesco hired Goldman Sachs earlier this year to look into selling a portion or all [...]
Soho House to raise £200m to fund expansion September 27, 2015 Soho House is trying to raise £200m in its second financing drive in two years. The group, which owns Shoreditch House and has 15 outposts around the world, including the recently opened Soho Farmhouse in Oxford, is looking to raise the funds to open six new houses and up to 30 restaurants over the next [...]
Few reports but Sainsbury’s and Tesco to update – London Report September 27, 2015 EQUITY reports are light again this week, ahead of earnings season which begins in earnest in the second half of October. Sainsbury’s first-half numbers, released on Wednesday, will be interesting, as the sector prepares to reveal how trading has fared over the past six months. Few people are expecting an upbeat statement. However, according to [...]
This time it’s personal: Lida’s Matthew Heath discusses direct marketing and virtual cars September 27, 2015 In their landmark book The One to One Future, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers told marketers to "operate in realities, not abstractions of realities". But in 1993, when their book was published, neither could have foreseen how quickly their idea of personalised advertising would be realised. "That idea was ahead of its time," says [...]
National living wage to hit convenience stores including Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s September 24, 2015 Convenience retailers warned today that they may have to reduce staff hours or cut jobs entirely to fund George Osborne’s national living wage of £9 for over-25s by 2020. Britain’s convenience sector employs around 407,000 staff and consists of around 50,000 stores – of which fewer than 2,500 are run by Tesco, Morrisons and [...]
Amazon might be planning to launch online food service Fresh in the UK – but against Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda and other major players, has it bitten off more than it can chew? September 23, 2015 If there were an award for the company that most shaped the retail zeitgeist over the past 10 years, then Amazon would most certainly be a contender. Its innovations have changed the way we shop. Such a pioneering status inevitably creates a great deal of interest. However, along with the interest come some hype: including the [...]
Britons’ telecoms consumer complaints revealed: Vodafone’s mobile prices and EE’s broadband most criticised September 22, 2015 Vodafone is the most complained-about mobile operator, new figures from industry regulator Ofcom show. More than one in every 7,500 customers had complaints about the UK’s third-biggest operator. Most, 34 per cent, saw red over the prices, but ironically, the second-biggest reason for complaining was how the operator handled complaints. Britons’ consumer complaints have been [...]
Sainsbury’s beats Tesco, Asda and Morrisons as only top supermarket in growth while Kantar warns of impact Amazon Fresh will have on sector September 22, 2015 Yet more bad data for the Big Four was released today – plus a hint that there could be a fresh problem facing the UK's supermarket sector, in the form of Amazon Fresh. Sainsbury was the only supermarket among the Big Four to keep pace with the sector's growth over the last quarter, with Asda's [...]
Jeremy Corbyn’s betting odds: It was YouGov research wot shifted the dial on the Labour leaderership election September 16, 2015 Forget the old chestnut: “If you really want to know what is going to happen just look to the betting odds. Money is smarter than pollsters.” So when the next person trots out the tired old arguments about “the wisdom of crowds”, point them to Jeremy Corbyn’s victory in the Labour leadership contest. [...]
Is your phone operator the worst? Ofcom names and shames the most complained about providers September 15, 2015 Telecoms regulator Ofcom has today named and shamed the broadband, mobile, and landline providers who received the most complaints in the first quarter of 2015. Landline provider complaints per 1,000 customers (Source: Ofcom) Ofcom, which receives about 300 complaints a day from telecoms consumers, said EE was the biggest culprit when it came to [...]