Sainsbury’s has delivered its highest market share since 2016, supported by improved customer satisfaction across all channels.
First quarter sales are up 4.9% for the Sainsbury’s brand and 4.4% for Argos, with customer satisfaction rising 7.4 percentage points in relation to value for money.
The supermarket is the middle of its ‘Next Level’ three-year strategic plan, announced last February, focused on four pillars: food, Argos, Nectar Prices, and saving and investing.
CEO Simon Roberts told Marketing Week on a call with media today (1 July) the Next Level strategy to “make food joyful accessible and affordable for everyone, everyday” has driven a “clear purpose” in how the brand wants to “show up with and for customers”.
Sainsbury’s has delivered its highest market share since 2016, supported by improved customer satisfaction across all channels.
First quarter sales are up 4.9% for the Sainsbury’s brand and 4.4% for Argos, with customer satisfaction rising 7.4 percentage points in relation to value for money.
The supermarket is the middle of its ‘Next Level’ three-year strategic plan, announced last February, focused on four pillars: food, Argos, Nectar Prices, and saving and investing.
CEO Simon Roberts told Marketing Week on a call with media today (1 July) the Next Level strategy to “make food joyful accessible and affordable for everyone, everyday” has driven a “clear purpose” in how the brand wants to “show up with and for customers”.
“That’s really underpinning all of the creative work you’re seeing under the Sainsbury’s brand at the moment,” said Roberts.
Currently running both a Taste the Difference and price campaign simultaneously is a “big step”, the CEO added.
“The Sainsbury’s brand is more forward, it’s more visible and customers are resonating with both the content and the offer that we’re putting in front of them,” said Roberts.
In February, Sainsbury’s CMO Mark Given brought sustainability and data under his remit, which Roberts said was a result of the retailer merging capabilities and investing more into data and analytics. The idea is to “link together” brand and customer insight with data analytics, supported by a “really strong” digital and tech capability.
“When you look at a lot of the things we’re doing inside our company at the moment, they’re all about, how do we build these capabilities so that we can take what we do for customers, literally, to the next level?” added Roberts.
‘Outperforming’ the market
The CEO attributed a “winning combination of value, quality, availability and service” to the supermarket’s Q1 success.
More customers are choosing Sainsbury’s for their ‘big shop’ and as a first choice for food, with the grocer seeing almost 2% year-on-year growth in primary shoppers compared to its competitors at under 1%.
Overall, Sainsbury’s has seen 30 successive periods of growth in primary customer numbers, coinciding with the company’s mission to deliver £1bn of cost savings by March 2027.
The Aldi Price Match campaign has also extended to around 800 products, driving 6% growth in convenience sales and the supermarket’s “highest ever customer satisfaction score”. According to Roberts, Sainsbury’s has the “most extensive” Aldi Price Match in the market.
Grocery sales overall rose 5%, with Sainsbury’s also seeing an 18% year-on-year growth in its Taste the Difference range fuelled by product innovation. There are plans to open 40 stores this year, including 25 convenience stores.
Nectar Prices are now available on more than 9,000 products, with over a million customers accessing personalised savings each week. The company is working to a goal of delivering 500 million personalised offers a week.
The Sainsbury’s brand is more forward, it’s more visible and customers are resonating with both the content and the offer that we’re putting in front of them.
Simon Roberts, Sainsbury’s
Sainsbury’s general merchandise and clothing sales also grew 4.2%, with Tu Clothing “outperforming the market” as sales rose 8%.
Elsewhere, the brand claimed to be “investing at scale to accelerate” its retail media network and shared plans for its upcoming Nectar 360 Pollen offering. Set for release in late 2025, the unified platform will allow clients to plan, book and activate their retail media investment across Sainsbury’s and Argos in one place.
Roberts said the new platform “combines AI with deep customer insight and will be the most advanced platform of its kind in the UK”.
“This really is a one stop simplified platform to enable brands and agencies to be able to get their content live in a very agile way, and it will be unrivalled in the market,” he added.
While Argos has experienced challenges in recent years, sales growth and higher value perception scores were boosted by Big Red promotional events and ‘The A List’ marketing campaign showcasing premium brands and trending products.
According to Roberts, improvements to the Argos digital experience aided sales growth.
