Waitrose and Sainsbury’s boost their brands
RETAILERS have had a bumper Christmas according to the British?Retail?Consortium, but here is my review of 2009 as far as supermarkets are concerned.
Graph 1 shows the share of total attention that each of the six received on BrandIndex. Over the course of 2009, Aldi and Asda dropped, Tesco and Morrison’s stayed steady, and Waitrose and Sainsbury’s gained.
When we turn to some of the components of the seven BrandIndex scores: on “value”, Asda and Morrison’s fought it out all year for top spot, with Waitrose improving significantly from a low base: at the start of the year, only 46 per cent of those who ventured an opinion reckoned Waitrose to provide value, today it stands at 59 per cent.
On “quality”, meanwhile, Waitrose and Sainsbury’s have shared top spot the whole time.
On “net recommend scores”, Sainsbury’s remained in the lead all year, increasing the gap over second-place Tesco, with Morrison’s and especially Waitrose making gains.
Graph 2 shows the proportional scores (that is, the percentage of the “attention” that was positive), summarising the position.
Bear in mind this is proportional, and should be read in conjunction with Graph 1.
Aldi is relatively in the dumps, having attracted quite a bit of media attention when we were heading into recession, but its satisfaction ratings remain up there with its competitors.
•Now an apology: last week the figures I gave for customer satisfaction were wrong, for reasons I blush to admit: sheer carelessness with the excel sheet when cutting and pasting the columns.
No excuse. They should have been as follows: (percentage of those satisfied among all those identifying themselves as recent customers): Sainsbury’s 90 per cent, Waitrose 87 per cent, Morrison’s, 87 per cent, Asda, 83 per cent, Aldi 80 per cent, Tesco 79 per cent.
Stephan Shakespeare is co founder and chief innovation officer of YouGov.