Housewares Business-to-business magazine for housewares retailers and their suppliers
For the six-week Christmas period, like-for-like sales in the UK for supermarket chain Tesco grew by 1.3% as customers ‘responded well to a stronger seasonal offering’.
In the six weeks to 9 January, volumes rose by 3.5% and transactions increased by 3.4%. In the peak festive week, Tesco introduced 4,000 additional ‘Here to Help’ colleagues to stores to give customers an extra helping hand.
The grocer said its strong Christmas performance was evident in all formats and categories, including positive like-for-like sales growth in its Extra format. Demand for its grocery home shopping service resulted in a record number of orders delivered in one day on December 22.
But Tesco’s third quarter like-for-like sales performance was 1.5% which, it said, reflected the impact of not repeating three ‘£5 off £40’ national coupon campaigns from the prior year
Chief executive Dave Lewis commented: “Our Christmas performance was strong, benefiting from lower prices on an outstanding range of products. Our customer service improved materially and our colleagues went the extra mile. Put simply, we put customers at the heart of everything we did and they responded by buying more of what they needed at Tesco.
“We are continuing to focus our efforts on serving our customers a little better every day and I want to thank my colleagues across the group for their commitment, passion and energy. There is plenty more to do, but we are making good progress and are trading in line with profit expectations for the full year.”
