Beyond billboards: Kinetic’s UK CEO Stuart Taylor on the new out-of-home advertising June 23, 2014 Liam Ward-Proud talks to Kinetic’s UK chief executive Stuart Taylor Once a relative backwater of the marketing landscape (compared to high-budget TV ads at least) the digital revolution is giving out-of-home (OOH) advertising a new lease of life. Static billboards and posters are being replaced with digital screens and moving images, increasingly able to interact [...]
Lidl owner Schwarz Group to be biggest grocery retailer in western Europe by 2018 | City A.M. June 18, 2014 Schwarz Group, the owner of cut-price supermarket Lidl, is set to become the top grocery retailer in western Europe, with the German company likely to overtake current market leader French rival Carrefour by 2018 and perhaps as soon as the end of next year,a report released by Planet Retail yesterday claimed. With Schwarz Group only [...]
Marx was wrong (cont): Corporate giants are inherently fragile June 17, 2014 ONE of Karl Marx’s big theories was that capitalism had an inherent tendency towards monopoly and would thus self-destroy. The idea remains widely held, and is one reason countries operate stringent anti-trust regulations. But it’s a little more complicated than that. First, many monopolies or quasi-monopolies are actually created by the state, rather than resulting [...]
Lidl owner to be biggest grocery retailer in western Europe by 2018 June 17, 2014 Schwarz Group, the owner of cut-price supermarket Lidl, is set to become the top grocery retailer in western Europe, with the German company likely to overtake current market leader French rival Carrefour by 2018 and perhaps as soon as the end of next year,a report released by Planet Retail yesterday claimed. With Schwarz Group only [...]
Bottom Line: Every Lidl helps: Discounters’ big future June 17, 2014 IF THE UK’s biggest supermarkets have any scraps of hope left that the discounters will soon stop nipping at their market share, they should abandon them now. Discount is set to be one of the fastest growing channels for years to come, adding €40bn (£32bn) in sales across Western Europe by 2018, according to a [...]
Tesco backs Blinkbox with Clubcard rewards in fight against Netflix and Amazon June 17, 2014 Blinkbox, the Tesco-owned TV and film streaming service, is introducing customer rewards to attract and retain customers. Tesco is putting the weight of its Clubcard loyalty scheme behind Blinkbox in a bid to stand out from rivals such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video. The scheme is the biggest tie-up between the two [...]
Tesco’s rating cut again by Moody’s June 16, 2014 TESCO suffered fresh bad news yesterday as Moody’s cut its rating again for the troubled retail giant, reducing its rating to Baa2 from Baa1, only two grades above “junk” status. The downgrade comes after Tesco announced its worst sales results in decades recently, while also posting a six per cent drop in its annual profits, [...]
B&M Retail bags £1.1bn to buck market gloom June 12, 2014 B&M RETAIL yesterday shook off the gloom in the new issues market to debut the biggest stock market flotation in London since Royal Mail. The budget chain, chaired by former Tesco boss Sir Terry Leahy, raised £1.1bn by selling 40 per cent of the company to City investors. Shares rose in informal trading to close [...]
Bottom Line: As the going gets tough, Justin King gets going June 11, 2014 There was a lot of back-slapping at Sainsbury’s yesterday, with Justin King talking up his successor, and his successor lavishing praise on the soon-to-depart chief executive. “When Justin started at the business we were serving 14m customers a week, and now we’re serving 24m a week. That’s a great achievement,” enthused Mike Coupe. King insists the [...]
Justin King’s final curtain: Sainsbury’s CEO goes out on sliding sales June 11, 2014 It is chief executive Justin King’s last set of results, and Sainsbury's has reported a 1.1 per cent fall in like-for-like sales – in line with expectations. Including fuel, they dropped 2.4 per cent in the 12 weeks to 7 June. But shares have risen by as much as two per cent this morning. Darren [...]