cwathen wrote:Saying that, I live very close to the Safeways in Longridge near Preston, and I'll be sad to see that change. It's in a great location, surrounded by a load of hills and fields, and I simply can't imagine it as a Morrisons. I've always thought of Safeways as being a nice place to go to for a change, whereas Morrisons is good for your average shop.
I think it's more of a north/south thing. Morrisons isn't really a brand which is identified with very strongly in the south. I have never even seen a Morrisons store, let alone shopped in one, and many (most?) people from the south can probably say the same.
That is quite true really as the majority of Morrisons stores are rather nicely designed and are very good for the average shop. But cwathen your views are shared with the majority of people who have contributed to this thread, well everyone except me and Phil, but I work for a Morrisons and all of the effort that goes into preperation of all departments is very high. If you go to one here in Granadaland it is like an Asda if you want to put it like that.
When it was my first day there we watched loads of videos one of them being: Why you should Invest, buy and work for Morrisons, which was presented by Dianne Oxberry that was very funny, but it explained alot about the company. It also says that they like to adapt to the local culture and have some form of monument or something, in the case of the Warrington store being so close to the Manchester Ship Canal that in the Café there are loads of pictures of Boats on the Ship Canal in the 1890's. Shame they can't do the same with the Safeway stores, but that would take years to do, as the amount of Safeway stores outnumbers the Morrisons stores by four times or so.
And I think the resistance to it seems to be that Morrisons apparantly are going to banish the Safeway brand as quickly as possible. Perhaps in the north that doesn't sound so bad but looking at it from a southern viewpoint, all I'm seeing is a weaker brand displacing a stronger brand (even in terms of raw numbers of stores, Morrisons is weaker than Safeway), almost immediately.
In a way you don't blame them as it is a takeover and they do want to make their brand work in the South of England, but they're doing it all wrong, they're doing it all at once which it isn't helping. IMO The best thing for them to do is to lower the prices and make people aware of the fact that Morrisons owns Safeway, but not as cheesey as the adverts, then bit by bit they should Morrisons-ise it, like the same way Carlton did with Central. People call Morrisons signs and in store promotions tacky I think the one's that Safeway have been using look like some reject Asda ones.