Sainsbury’s: Festive Sales Cheer

Date Posted: 20 February 2009

With media attention heavily focused on the negativity of the market place at present, any positive news stories often get overlooked. One such article involved Sainsbury’s Christmas sales figures.

In the 13 week period ending the 3rd January 2009, Sainsbury’s saw sales rise by 4.5% which (as Sainsbury’s pointed out), is attributable to the company’s best ever Christmas trading period.

Despite trading being ‘better than expected’, Justin King (Sainsbury’s Chief Executive) remained cautious, noting that he expected the current economic climate would remain ‘particularly challenging’ going forward.

The amount of positive ‘Buzz’ generated by this news story led to an increase in Sainsbury’s ‘Buzz’ score of nearly 13pts, peaking at 28% - well above the average ‘Buzz’ score for the top 4 supermarkets (Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s & Morrisons).

Despite the downturn, Sainsbury’s appears to be maintaining its position as one of the highest scoring brands tracked by BrandIndex.

Richard Wood, BrandIndex Senior Research Executive

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