Reuters
Maria Mazzoleni (blue) of Brazil battles Kathleen Sell of U.S to win bronze medal at women's -70kg judo contest at the Pan American Games in Guadalajara October 27, 2011.
Britain's third largest grocer by market share said in its second quarter trading statement that like-for-like retail sales for second quarter were down 1.1 % (excluding fuel) and down 3.3%t (including fuel).
Sainsbury's, alongside other major British supermarkets, is battling for market share in the face of aggressive competition from cheap-and-cheerful newcomers like Aldi and Lidl. Sainsbury's is slashing prices in order to remain competitive, but this means it's collecting less at the tills.
"During the quarter we saw an improvement in our key trading metrics. Both volume and transactions grew as the decline in average basket spend in supermarkets continued to stabilise," said Mike Coupe, CEO at Sainsbury's.
"Whilst the market is clearly still challenging, with food deflation impacting many categories, we are making good progress on delivering our strategy."
"Year-to-date we have traded well, with both sales and cost savings ahead of expectations. Should current market trends continue, we expect our full year underlying profit before tax to be moderately ahead of our published consensus."
Last week, researchers Kantar Worldpanel revealed that for the 12 weeks ending September 13, supermarket growth remained static at 0.9%. It added that this is the sixth consecutive month that sales among the grocers grew by less than 1%.
Sainsbury's is currently Britain's largest supermarket with 16.2% of the market share, compared to 17.1% from two years ago. In tandem, Aldi's market share jumped from 3.2% to 5.6% over the same period while Lidl's soared from 2.7% to 4.2%.