Christmas a mixed bag for Sainsbury's as online shines
Sainsbury’s reports that like-for-like sales in the 15 weeks before 4th January fell 0.7% year-on-year.
Grocery sales grew 0.4%, with online commerce up 7.3%. Argos also had a record Black Friday with mobile sales and Click and Collect proving a hit with customers.
“Our digital investments are paying off and over 20% of our business was online in the quarter. Groceries Online had record order numbers throughout the Christmas period and customers are increasingly choosing to shop with SmartShop in our supermarkets,” says Mike Coupe, Chief Executive at J Sainsbury. “32 million customers shopped with us across Sainsbury’s and Argos in the key Christmas week.”
SmartShop self-scanning technology is now available in over 500 supermarkets. On average, 15% of sales now go through SmartShop in stores where handsets are available.
Sainsbury’s has also invested in over 2,600 self checkouts. It says that this has lead to improvements in ease and speed of checkout customer satisfaction scores of nearly four percentage points and five percentage points respectively year-on-year.
