RE: SUPERSTORE Morrisons rumoured to sell off ‘local’ sites including branches in Blackburn and Barrowford.

The allegation I read was a fair number of Morrison M stores were located at inferior sites and the company over-paid for them; but the problems run far, far deeper than under-performing convenience stores.

The ‘Big Four’ supermarkets are struggling to come to terms with a changing world – the glory days are well and truly over. We lived through a period of supermarket-mania and now they have too much space, and too few customers.

There’s gross over-supply: too many big sheds, too many convenience outlets cannibalising core sales, internet delivery merely transferring sales, losing customers to the discounters – that are continuing to expand – and losing more affluent customers to the premium providers.

Whatever strategy that one supermarket constructs can be copied fairly easily by their competitors, although not necessarily successfully. For management this is the stuff of nightmares, but in the short-term is great for customers.

The ‘Big Four’ are reducing costs but I think that sooner or later they are going to have reduce selling space quite significantly, and that is going to be painful.

Kevin, Colne