Morrisons goes after 'dusk and dawn' shoppers

Denise Roland
17 Aug 2014
Telegraph UK
Morrisons has fired the latest shot in the battle to claw back market share from discounters by extending opening hours at nearly half of its stores.
Britain’s fourth biggest supermarket will on Monday extend opening hours to 6am -11pm at 230 of its 490 shops.
It hopes the move, which will mean Morrisons stores will be open for 1,600 more hours per week in total, will help capture growing numbers of so-called “dawn and dusk” shoppers.
A recent poll by YouGov found that one in five shoppers prefer to visit the supermarket before 9am or after 8pm, either because it is “quieter” at these times, or because of work or family obligations.
Dalton Philips, Morrisons’ under-pressure chief executive, said stores “need to be open for longer” to meet the demands of “modern family life, flexible working hours and busy schedules”.
The Morrisons boss, who is under intense pressure to reverse a dramatic slide in sales, is in the throes of a major restructure.
He plans to turn four tiers of store management into one, axing 2,600 jobs in the process, redesign the layout of 277 shops, and refurbish store cafes and toilet facilities. The company is also modernising its IT system so that shelves are automatically replenished and staff no longer have to order goods with a pen and paper.
But he has been publicly lambasted by the company’s founder Sir Ken Morrison, who decried the company’s performance as “disastrous” and criticised the strategy as buls**t.
Morrisons made a pre-tax loss of £176m last year after writing down the value of its property, IT, and baby equipment retailer Kiddicare and has continued to struggle this year, with like-for-like sales dropping 7.1pc in the quarter to May 4.
It has also warned that profits this year will be half what the City initially expected as the retailer slashes prices in an attempt to get back on track, and shares in the company have fallen by more than a third since the start of the year.
The supermarket has also this year started to offer online shopping, making it the last of the Big Four to succumb to growing demand for home grocery deliveries. Although sceptics suggested it was too far behind its rivals to succeed, it has said the online business is performing “ahead of expectations”.
But Morrisons is not alone in struggling to cling on to market share in the face of fierce competition from German discounters Aldi and Lidl.
Tesco and Sainsbury’s reported falls of 3.7pc and 1.1pc in like-for-like sales in their most recent trading updates, though Asda bucked the trend by reporting a 0.5pc increase.
Meanwhile, recent figures indicate that more than half of British shoppers have started using Aldi, Lidl and similar food discounters.
The Big Four are in the opening skirmishes of a supermarket price war in a bid to win shoppers back, after Asda fired the starting pistol late last year. Morrisons and Tesco have followed suit, with vows to cut prices on a range of products, though Sainsbury’s has not yet entered the fray.