UK: The BIG 4

Tesco plc is a UK-based international grocery and general merchandising retail chain. It is the largest British retailer by both global sales and domestic market share, is the world’s third-largest grocery retailer, and is the fourth-largest retailer behind Wal-Mart of the United States, Carrefour of France, and The Home Depot of the United States.

Originally specialising in food, it has diversified into areas such as discount clothes, consumer electronics, consumer financial services, selling and renting DVDs, compact discs and music downloads, internet service consumer telecoms and most recently budget software.

ASDA is a chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom offering food, clothing and general merchandise products. It became a subsidiary of the American retail giant Wal-Mart in 1999, and is currently the second largest chain in the UK after Tesco.

ASDA is Wal-Mart’s largest overseas subsidiary, accounting for almost half of the company’s international sales. As of January 2006, there were 21 ASDA/Wal-Mart Supercentres, 243 ASDA superstores, 37 ASDA supermarkets (including town centres), five ASDA Living stores, 10 George clothing stores and 24 depots (distribution centres). ASDA has 150,000 employees, who it refers to as “colleagues” (90,000 part-time, 60,000 full-time).

Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd, commonly known as Sainsbury’s, a chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom. The group also has interests in property and banking. The group has an estate worth about £6 billion (October 2006).

For much of the twentieth century Sainsbury’s was the market leader in the UK supermarket sector. However in 1995 it lost its place as the UK’s largest grocer to Tesco and in 2003 was pushed into third by ASDA. The company’s fortunes have improved since the launch of a recovery programme by CEO Justin King in 2004. Despite predictions that Sainsbury’s would regain second position and a narrowing of ASDA’s lead in recent months, the latest figures released by Taylor Nelson Sofres in October 2006 showed Sainsbury’s losing share slightly, from 15.9% to 15.7% compared to ASDA’s 16.6%. Tesco’s share was 31.4% and Morrisons’ 11.1%.

Wm Morrison Supermarkets plc (LSE: MRW) is the fourth largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom. The company is usually referred to as Morrisons and it is part of the FTSE 100 Index of companies.

Morrisons is now one of just four supermarket chains that dominate the full-size superstore market in the United Kingdom. In descending order of size the other three are Tesco, ASDA (owned by Wal-Mart), and Sainsbury’s. Morrisons strategy is based on doing the basics efficiently, selling predominantly food at low prices, and doing so only from large stores.