This photo is the newsagent corner in a Sainsbury’s Local in Greater London, which I saw a few days ago.
Opposite this placement of magazines, papers, stationery and lottery products and our of shot is a small stand of cards.
Sainsbury Local is a small format, high street, supermarket. All the major UK supermarkets have small formal high street offerings, squeezing indie retailers out of this convenience space.
Given how much Coles and Woolworths follow UK supermarkets, we have to expect fine tuning of their small format high street offering. We see it in Australia already in fuel and in some city high street locations, but not to the extent of the UK.
Differentiation is key in retail. Always has been and remains so today. When it comes to the convenience space in the UK, the major supermarkets all look pretty much the same. From what I can see they rely on their loyalty programs and myriad price-based offers to drive traffic through their doors.