Sainsbury’s has posted steady Christmas sales figures, with particularly encouraging growth in its online groceries and convenience channels.
Like-for-like sales excluding fuel edged up by 0.1 per cent at the retailer, while total retail sales excluding fuel grew by 0.8 per cent in the 15 weeks to 7 January.
Driving Sainsbury’s growth were the retailer’s online grocery sales, which increased by an impressive nine per cent and made up 18 per cent of the group’s total sales in the quarter.
Convenience store sales, meanwhile, rose by six per cent – thanks, in part, to 15 store openings and six new trial franchise stores in Euro Garages’ petrol forecourts.
Chief executive Mike Coupe said: “Sainsbury’s offered customers greater quality food, choice and value than ever before, across all channels. We had a record Christmas week with over 30 million customer transactions at Sainsbury’s and over £1 billion of sales across the group.'
Part of Sainsbury’s Christmas strategy was to implement simpler pricing in favour of multi-buy promotions, the vast majority of which have been removed.
Over the festive period Sainsbury’s customers paid 14 per cent less for a typical Christmas basket than they did two years ago. But the retailer boosted its Taste the Difference offering, with 25 per cent of products in the premium range being new or improved compared to two years ago.
The supermarket chain’s overall group sales were lifted by a strong Black Friday and Christmas trading performance from Argos – the brand it acquired for £1.4 billion in September last year. Like-for-like sales at the catalogue retailer were up four per cent, taking total like-for-like growth for the group to one per cent.
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