Prices cut as sales fall at Morrisons

Shopper who go to Morrisons will see a noticeable difference to their bills over the next few months, as the supermarket chain has promised to keep on cutting its prices.
The superstore has struggled over the last year, and has even seen a fall in sales recently. Throughout the 13 weeks to 01 November, like-for-like sales were down by 2.6% (excluding fuel sales).
The number of vouchers that the supermarket has been offering has been cut, and this, Morrisons said in a statement, is partly to blame. “We again reduced the number of vouchers, which impacted year-on-year Q3 sales by 2.4% and by more towards the end of the quarter.”
However, the chief executive, David Potts, is not worried. He said that “the business is moving at pace on the long journey towards improving the shopping trip for customers. Our priorities for the rest of the year are unchanged – to stabilise trading, reduce costs and further improve the capability of the leadership team. We are making good progress in many areas and customers are noticing improvements.”
Other experts are not so convinced. John Ibbotson, from Retail Vision, expressed the potential that Morrisons may even become a takeover target. “It’s hard to see Morrisons ever making a full recovery, and it’s potentially ripe for takeover. Only question is, who will buy it?”
Furthermore, the company reported a 52% drop in annual profits back in March, one of the worst in eight years.
The future of the company seems somewhat clouded, what with the desperate measures that have been taken to try and save some cash, recently, and it is doing the worst out of the big four stores (Tesco, Asda,Sainsbury’s and, of course, Morrisons) that command the market in the UK.