Iconic UK newsagent reacts to competition

The challenge

With increased competition affecting sales and sales composition, our client – a leading UK news, stationery and book retailer – needed help to better understand its competition and how best to react to threats to profitability.

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The solution

After working with the client to quantify the impact of different competitors, we developed a number of localised strategies.
These included pivoting to emphasise other strengths, as well as addressing local competition head-on with up-weighted local marketing, more aggressive pricing and increased customer engagement.
On our advice, the client increased local marketing and implemented more aggressive pricing on products in key highly competitive departments.
Complementing this approach, the client increased differentiation through expanding its offer in less competitively-impacted departments.

The results

On implementing our recommendations, the client has enjoyed strong space productivity in competed locations, while more aggressive local pricing has led to overall market share gains in their most contested departments.