Somerfield is bought out by The Co-Op

[DVB Cornwall]

Obviously now there are going to be a number of holes in the High Street as branches of the Co-op and Somerfield are consolidated.

There'll be some interesting opportunities open for medium sized stores coming on the market in many localities.

Truro is a good example. Co-op's location is ideal for walking and public transport user, whilst Somerfield is adjacent to a Multistorey Car park, so which one will be retained?

(Not that I've been in either for a while)

[Netizen]

At least it means those cringeworthy tv ads Somerfield have been running in the last year will be gone. The 'co-operative food' branding has really grown on me recently, despite it leaving me cold when it first started being used. There was pretty much nothing to recommend about Somerfield.

[Jovis]

Truro for example is a good example.

Oooh, nice sentence.

[Nini]

Nearby me I have two Somerfield stores of very slightly different sizes within 500 yards of each other, one which was a Safeway which had to be sold off.

No, I'm not certain why they allowed it either and I wonder which'll stay on.

[tvmercia]

i wonder if CWS will be passing on somerfield stores to the relevant regional co-operative societies, as was the case with the alldays purchase. it would seem counter productive for CWS to operate stores which would be competing directly with fellow societies.

[rdobbie]

So if a small container of milk had stayed at 568ml but the price had gone up by 12%, would that have been just as bad?

Methinks you've been talking to Luxton. Or reading the Daily Mail. They're much the same thing.

The price was already more than 12% higher before the downsizing happened, so now it's a double whammy - it's dearer than a pint in all other supermarkets, and it's not even a pint.

It's not the principle of higher prices that I'm opposed to. If they want to be like Waitrose and charge a bit more for everything, because they have higher standards and a nicer shopping experience, or want to pass on more money to the hard-pressed British farmer, or pay their staff a better wage, or whatever reason they may want to give, that's fine by me. I'm often happy to pay more if there's a sound reason.

But Waitrose are upfront about things like that. It's the principle of downsizing from imperial to metric which I find stealthy and deceitful. It's not a transparent way of doing business. It catches people out, and it makes like-for-like price comparison very difficult for the consumer.

At the end of the day, Co-op wanted to hike their already inflated prices even further but they knew it would be unjustifiable in the eyes of their customers, so they downsized the pack to conceal the price rise.

If they can downsize from 568ml to 500ml, they can and will, downsize further if they think people won't notice. This has happened with things like bags of sweets, which started off at 227g (half a pound) then went to 200g. But it didn't stop there - you'll see many bags are 190g or 180g now.

[cwathen]

The 'co-operative food' branding has really grown on me recently, despite it leaving me cold when it first started being used. There was pretty much nothing to recommend about Somerfield.

I find co-op food quite nice and of much better quality than is often perceived. I do wish Plymouth Co-Op would sort out their ranging issues though. Not only do they not seem to realise that the larger stores can carry more products (the tiny shop at the end of my road carries exactly the same range as one 4 times the size a few streets away - the larger store has nothing more in it) but they seem to have issues with sourcing and maintaining a constant range. A good example is their steak - in the last 3 months it's evolved from braising steak, to steak strips, to rump steak, to sirloin steak, to a twin pack of sirloin steak...and currently they have no steak. This happens with all sorts of products - just because you bought something there last week, you can't rely on that product still being there next week.

Truro is a good example. Co-op's location is ideal for walking and public transport user, whilst Somerfield is adjacent to a Multistorey Car park, so which one will be retained?

The current co-op store, despite being in a better location, is the obvious one to go. Despite Truro being the only city in cornwall, It seems to have been left off of too many refit lists to count. It still retains 'Co-operative Pioneer' signeage 10 years after that brand's scrapping was announced, and the interior dates back to the 1980s when it traded as Lo-Cost (even continuing to sport such oldschool features as being a 'walk through' shop with checkouts at both ends - I can't think of anywhere else you still see that). Based also on the fact that last year Co-Op considered closing the supermarket, leasing most of the space out, and retaining only a small small format convenience store at the location, I think scumerfields will be the survivor in Truro - especially since it did have a relatively recent refit.

Truro somefields is an interesting one too. The building is split between Argos on the ground floor and Somefield on the top, both stores have their own dedicated exterior entrances, with somefield coming out onto the car park and Argos onto the street, so sharing the building isn't that obvious...or rather it wouldn't be except that a bizarre clause in the leasing arrangements means that there is a public internal connection between the two shops so you can walk into one and out of the other, and signeage for both companies must be displayed at both entrances. So at street level you have an Argos store which also has a Somerfield sign, and on the car park you have a Somerfield which boasts an Argos downstairs. In all my travels, venturing as far away from Cornwall as Devon, I've never seen anything so odd.

[rob]

The problem is with my local Co-Op is that the offers seem to change every 3 days or so. I haven't seen a series of promotions last more than 3 days in about a year.

Another problem I have with the Co-Op is the amount of time it takes for a till operative to discover there's a long queue before calling someone for assistance. The longest I've had to wait once is 10 minutes. With our Sheepfair taking place in Overton this weekend yards from my front door, I think I'll do my shopping in Andover.

[Mr Q]

Oh dear. This just means one less big player in the grocery market, and that's bad news for consumers. Less choice, less competition, more of a stranglehold over suppliers, etc.

I don't necessarily accept that. Surely by that reasoning, all mergers would be bad, and none should be approved. It ignores the benefits that can emerge from these types of acquisitions. If there are economies of scale to be gained, these help to lower costs. That's a positive outcome. This merger would not appear on the face of it to result in a substantial lessening of competition, although in specific local markets, divestiture of individual stores might be justified.

Nevertheless, I think there are some fascinating competition issues with Britain's supermarkets. I think Gavin posted an article earlier this year about an OFT investigation into collusion between a number of major retailers over the price of cigarettes. I'm aware there have also been inquiries into milk prices and other basic consumer goods. These are not markets which economists would normally associate with price-fixing, defying many of the conventional theories about the relative instability of cartels.

[Nick Harvey]

I think I'll do my shopping in Andover.

You could always pop over to Devizes, shop in the newly Co-Op'd Somerfield, then check out the hole in the Market Place where the old Co-Op used to be.

[rob]

You'd have to drag me kicking and screaming