Retail and consumer goods industry news

Amongst all modern retail channels, the impact of COVID-19 from a global perspective, has varied the most in convenience. The channel, however, continues to offer a massive opportunity for retailers and suppliers globally, benefiting from longer term consumption trends such as smaller households and more consumers shopping locally. With this in mind, we have identified five themes that we expect ...

Seven & i Holdings, Aeon and Lawson have posted their Q3 results for the nine months ended November 30, 2020. Summary and our view On January 7, 2021, the Japanese government declared a state of emergency in Tokyo and three surrounding prefectures. The Q3 results do not reflect this latest announcement, the Christmas trading period, nor the recent snow storms, but show the continued negativ...

In line with much of the UK grocery retail sector major regional co-operative Central England has reported a buoyant Christmas trading performance, announcing sales growth of +9.2% for the three weeks from the middle of December to 2 January. New Year’s Eve saw the highest growth With 260 stores across 16 counties of midland and eastern England, Central England Co-op reported especially str...

Co-op wholesale subsidiary, Nisa has announced that it successfully onboarded 620 new stores to its distribution network in the course of 2020, a significant rise on 2019. This provides a significant platform for growth into 2021 following the significant boost seen in performance over 2020, with Nisa sales reported up 14% in the half year to July. Mix of independent and multi-site operators a...

Switzerland-based Migros has reported Group sales rose 4% to CHF29.8 bn (US$33.5 bn), with retail sales outperforming. Migros said retail sales, which were driven by its growth online, increased by 7.2% to CHF24.2 bn (US$27.2 bn). Pandemic underpins sales growth in Switzerland Migros said its growth in 2020 was underpinned by changing shopper behaviours, which pushed its online channel’s in...

To cope with fewer employees in its stores, Aeon Japan will introduce self-checkouts this year and it has also started using UV-based sanitisers for its shopping baskets. Cost to implement self-checkouts is less than 10% of Amazon’s system Aeon will increase self-checkout registers that can read prices of items that customers purchase, through their smartphone app.  This new system will sta...

A.S. Watson Group and Grab, the leading delivery and payment solutions provider in Southeast Asia, have formed a new partnership that will create the largest omnichannel health and beauty partnership in the region. Access to more than 62,000 health and beauty products in six markets Shoppers can now purchase a wide assortment of more than 62,000 health and beauty products from Watsons throu...

To create a larger and more inclusive rewards ecosystem, Flipkart has recently introduced SuperCoin Pay.  It allows customers to checkout in physical stores through the rewards earned from Flipkart’s online platform.    Wider range of merchants to redeem rewards The launch of the SuperCoin rewards programme in 2019 has been a success, with over 10bn SuperCoins earned by millions of Flipkart...

Following a relative reluctance to develop its ecommerce business to include a store pickup service, Costco is testing a curbside model at stores in New Mexico, USA. Optimising its partnership with Instacart Although Costco has operated an online non-food business for several years, it wasn’t until 2017 that it started to offer a grocery-focused service. Launching three and a half years ago...

Casino-owned Cdiscount has set out several strategic initiatives as it aims to support ‘ businesses to accelerate European ecommerce ’. Cdiscount launches ‘ complete marketplace solution ’… As it looks to embed profitable and international growth Cdiscount has said it is using its online expertise to launch a B2B business, which it says provides a ‘ complete marketplace solution ’ including...