UK supermarket Asda seeing 'green shoots' of recovery
The boss of British supermarket Asda said he was seeing "green shoots" of recovery after the group slowed the rate of its sales decline in its first quarter, helped by lower prices and better product availability.
Asda, Britain's third largest food retailer after Tesco and Sainsbury's, said like-for-like sales in the four months to April 30, adjusted to include Easter trading, declined by 3.1% - an improvement on the 4.2% fall in the previous quarter.
Asda said it had seen further improvements in May.
"Although we are seeing the green shoots in sales performance, there is a long way to go," executive chairman Allan Leighton said.
Private equity firm TDR Capital, Asda's majority owner, brought Leighton back to the grocer in November, more than two decades after he served as CEO and turned the chain around before selling it to Walmart.
In March, Leighton warned his plan to be 5% to 10% cheaper than rivals would "materially reduce" profit. His comment hit the shares of Tesco and Sainsbury's on fears of a price war.
Asda said it had cut the prices of about 10,000 products, more than a third of its range, establishing a price gap of 3% to 6% over its full-service supermarket rivals.
It said product availability had increased from 90% to 95% since January, while customer satisfaction had also improved.
"People who've been in the industry a long time are amazed at the progress that we've made on availability in a relatively short period of time," Leighton told reporters.
Industry data published earlier this week showed Asda's sales fell 3.2% over the 12 weeks to May 18 year-on-year, with the group's market share down 90 basis points to 12.1%.
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The Journal
7 hours ago
- The Journal
'I'm genuinely afraid when I get to the till': Our readers on how food price rises affect them
'TAKE JACOB'S RICE cakes,' a reader writes. A packet of six chocolate-covered rice cakes cost €3 at the start of this year, she recalls. Then they jumped to €3.50. Now they're €3.75 in both Tesco and Supervalu (though currently on special offer in the latter, and still €3 in Dunnes). With a hungry teenager in the house, this family used to buy three packets a week – but that 75c increase adds up to an extra €117 per year. 'We've cut them out completely,' the reader told us. 'It's the same story with a lot of meats and fish. We just don't buy them any more.' Grocery prices are climbing, and have been for some time. Increase after increase adds up to a substantially more expensive shopping bill for most people compared with just a few years ago. Eating out has become much more expensive too. We asked our readers to tell us how higher food and drink prices are affecting them and received many responses. Our thanks to everyone who got in touch. Here's what you told us. Cutting back on groceries The reader with the teenage son said that, for her, food shopping has become a real source of anxiety. She and her partner both work full-time. 'I'm often genuinely afraid that when I get to the till, I won't have enough to cover what's in the basket. And we're not talking luxury items, just the basics to get by,' she said. Another mother, a 41-year-old with two children, said her family reduced spending in a number of areas, including by using less electricity and by reducing car trips to save on petrol. 'Definitely the supermarket is the most difficult one,' she said. One of her children is autistic and has sensory issues with food, meaning it's not possible to change the brands they buy. The supermarket pizza they used to buy for less than €1 is now almost €2, 'Every week, one or another item goes up by a few cents, which adds up at the end,' she said. The family may soon need to ask St Vincent de Paul for help, she said. It's not just families feeling the pressure. A 22-year-old woman from Clondalkin in Dublin said she skips breakfast or other meals if she isn't genuinely hungry, as her weekly food shop won't last through the week otherwise. She said she has sometimes used city centre soup kitchens 'just to have something in my stomach'. One 36-year-old single woman living in the midlands told us she has all but given up on buying meat, sweets and alcohol because of the cost. In any given trip to the supermarket, she might buy just one or two branded goods – usually tea and cheese. She is single and saving for a house deposit, and has a weekly grocery budget of €50 – but struggles to stick to it. Being careful with her money allows her to still be able to afford to socialise, though less often than she used to. Steep price rises since the pandemic Many readers pinpointed the beginning of grocery price inflation to a point in time somewhere around the pandemic, stating that their average shop seems to be 20% or 30% more expensive than it was then. These readers are on the money. In the five years to last month, prices for an average basket of food and non-alcoholic drinks increased by 23.4%, data from the Central Statistics Office shows. Climbing consumer price index for food and non-alcoholic drinks over the past five years CSO data / The Journal CSO data / The Journal / The Journal Damian O'Reilly, lecturer in retail management at TU Dublin, said: 'There's been a paradigm shift in the cost of food, and that cost is staying. The prices are not coming down any time soon.' He said significant price increases in the past year in the price of beef – partly due to increased demand from abroad for Irish exports – and dairy are likely to be followed by stabilisation over the coming months. CSO data indicates the price of a pound of butter is up almost €1 in the past year, with two litres of milk up 27c. Some consumers are switching from beef to chicken, or making other changes to their basket, while supermarket margins on these products are likely to be eroded, O'Reilly said. Advertisement Cocoa prices have been high for a year, driving up the price for products like the chocolate rice cakes mentioned earlier. Tesco said it's trying to absorb price increases but when they are sustained, this has to be reflected in the retail price to consumers. It said it offers an extensive range of rice cakes including good value own-brand products. O'Reilly emphasised that stabilisation does not mean the recent upward trend will go into reverse. Whether it's €11 for two steaks, or €10 for Lavazza coffee – just two of the products our readers mentioned as having been subject to significant recent price increases – this could be the new normal. Cutting out waste Many readers told us their response to increasing grocery prices is to try to stick to discount retailers, and to avoid convenience stores as much as possible. This is borne out by market research firm Kantar's data, which shows Lidl and Aldi are growing their Irish market share. Even when shopping at discount supermarkets, people try to keep their costs down by buying less. One woman said she never takes a trolley around Lidl to stop herself impulse buying, opting instead to fill a bag and then leave. Readers said the increasing price of groceries has made them much more conscious of waste. People said they are batch cooking, freezing food before it goes off, and sometimes treating use-by dates as discretionary if the food passes the 'smell test'. One 34-year-old mother of one from Dublin said: 'If we bought it, then we have to eat it.' No more changing our minds mid-week and ordering a takeaway instead of cooking.' It's not just food and drink increasing in price. Readers are also grappling with steep increases in the price of non-prescription pharmacy products, sun cream and pet food. One reader, whose regular sun cream now costs €25 from Tesco, said this essential product appeared to be priced for the privileged. (Tesco told us it offers a wide range of sun cream options starting at €5, or €4.40 with a club card.) One reader said the cat food she usually buys has almost doubled in price since before the pandemic adding: 'I'd strangle her, except the cremation fees are so high.' Cutting back on eating out It's bad news for restaurants and coffee shops from our hard-pressed readers. Many readers told us they have cut back significantly on meals out and on fancy coffees. Some readers said this was partly because they were trying to save money given the increase in the price of groceries. Most said eating out was just too expensive now, in and of itself. Many readers told us they loved eating out, but they just can't afford to do so with the frequency they used to. A 45-year-old man from Co Mayo said he used to love eating out, be it for lunch during the week or for dinner at the weekend. Now he does so just once a month at most. He acknowledged that food businesses are under pressure but said the quality of the product often just didn't match the price. Recently he had soup, a wrap and a cup of coffee which came to €21.50. 'Could I say it was worth one hour of my work? Absolutely not,' he said. Pub-goers too are feeling the pinch. A number of readers said they're more likely to enjoy a drink at home now than in the pub. Several readers remarked on the price of a glass of wine often being close to €10, putting this luxury out of their reach. One 62-year-old man said: 'Drink has gone up to a ridiculous price so that I have stopped having my two to three pints on a Saturday afternoon.' Some readers said they still try to find the budget for eating out, to the extent that they can afford to do so. Some older readers said going for a coffee helped them get out of the house. Many people said they have switched to more casual, less expensive locations, as well as reducing the frequency at which they eat out. One reader in her 60s, living in Dublin, told us that meeting friends for a meal out is more expensive than it was even one year ago. 'Two weeks ago I had three glasses of wine and a main course and, with tip, it came to €70. Glasses of wine are rarely less than €10 now. 'I met family for brunch in Avoca, Rathcoole and my three salads with bean something-or-other and an Americano was €23.50. A banoffee slice was €8.50.' She skipped the banoffee. A 56-year-old man in Co Louth said: 'Dinner out is a real treat, once every five to six weeks maybe, or celebrations only.' He added that he's also buying less food at the supermarket and eating smaller portions. 'Don't laugh. My waistline and health is thanking me for it!' he said. The reader with the teenage son who has stopped buying rice cakes said her family has downgraded their occasional treat of eating out from dinner to breakfast or brunch. 'Celebrating with a dinner out used to be a treat. Now, it's just stress,' she said. 'The fear of the final bill hanging over the evening makes it hard to enjoy.' Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone... A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation. Learn More Support The Journal
The Journal
10 hours ago
- The Journal
What the hell happened to Google search?
LET'S SAY YOU want a list of Irish ministers. So you google it, of course. The fact that it's its own verb sums up pretty neatly Google's total dominance of online search. 'I'll Bing it,' said no-one, ever. (Sorry, Microsoft.) is the world's most used website . Ninety percent of internet searches go through the company's search engine. It's the front door to the internet, and a navigational tool on which we have become entirely dependent. Who among us has typed out a url in the last decade? Whether you have an Android or an Apple phone, that's Google search you're using when you open your browser. But something has gone wrong. Search for 'Irish ministers' and the top result is… Pat Breen? ( The Journal checked this on several users' desktop browsers with the same result.) Breen was never a minister. He was a junior minister – and that was a while ago now. He lost his seat two elections ago, in 2020. A government website with a full list of current government ministers is quite a bit down the results page. Pat Breen, the Platonic ideal of an Irish minister, according to Google. Google Google Sponsored posts The utility of the search engine has been particularly eroded when it comes to anything that could be sold to you, with top results likely to all be from companies that have paid to skip up the ranking to a position where they would not have organically surfaced. These paid-for top results, which take up more and more space on the search engine results page, are also partly based on your browsing history rather than what you are currently looking for. So a search from an Irish location for 'the best place to buy children's shoes', for instance, can contain sponsored top results for (a) shops that don't sell children's shoes or (b) British online-only retailers. (Good luck buying children's shoes without trying them on.) There are useful results amid the debris of sponsored links and below the paid-for top table, but it feels like harder work than it once was to find them. This isn't helped by the fact that sponsored links are not very visually distinct from organic results. It's hard not to click on them. Ads on search are how Google makes most of its money. ChatGPT's challenge to Google And then, of course, there's the new AI Overview that, for the past year, has appeared in response to certain types of queries. Now, the integration of AI into search is about to be turbocharged as Google goes on the offensive against ChatGPT. It may not be its own verb yet, but for many people, OpenAI's chatbot is becoming as automatic and intuitive a go-to as Google. Liz Carolan, a tech consultant and author of The Briefing newsletter, says that while Google hasn't shared data on the drop-off in people using its search engine, all the signs are that the switch to ChatGPT has been 'profound'. Where once we would have googled, 'what time is the Eurovision', now we are asking chatbots. So Google is becoming a chatbot too. In May, Google began to roll out the next step up from AI Overview. AI Mode, which has been launched in the US, will deliver customised answers to users' questions, including charts and other features, rather than serving up a lists of links. These answers will be personalised based on past browsing history. You will even be able to integrate it with your Gmail account to allow further personalisation. At first, AI Mode will be a distinct option in search, but its features and capabilities will gradually be integrated into the core search product, Google has said . Carolan says this will be as fundamental a change to how we interact with the internet as the original arrival of Google search. 'Instead of navigating between links, we're going to end up using a single interface: a chatbot querying the websites that exist and delivering back to you its interpretation of that, in a conversational style,' she explains. An example of an AI Overview result in Google. Google Google AI nonsense The first problem is, Google's AI results can be nonsense . Kris Shrisnak, a senior fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties working on AI and tech, says people need to understand one fundamental point about the large language models (LLMs) on which chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google's Gemini AI are based: they are not designed to be accurate. 'When they're accurate, they are coincidentally accurate,' Shrisnak says. 'They're accurate by accident, rather than by design.' For example, Carolan recently wanted to check how many working days there are in June. Google's AI-generated top result helpfully explained that there are 21 working days and no public holidays in June. If you specify 'in Ireland', Google says there are 22 working days and no public holidays. Both answers are wrong. There are 20 working days in June, and the first Monday is always a public holiday. ChatGPT didn't know that either. It counted the bank holiday twice. Google isn't planning to take Monday off. Google Google 'It's just blatantly inaccurate,' Carolan says. 'People are relying on it, and it's giving them inaccurate information.' Aoife McIlraith, managing director of Luminosity Digital marketing agency, says Google had almost certainly released its AI search product sooner than it wanted to. 'There's huge pressure on them. It's the first time they actually had competition in the market for search. It will definitely get better, but it's going to take some time,' McIlraith says. Google defended AI Overviews, telling The Journal that people prefer search with this feature. It said AI Overview was designed to bring people 'reliable and relevant information' from 'top web results', and included links. Advertisement Enshittification Even setting aside the incorporation of undercooked AI answers into results, Google's traditional search product does not seem to be working as well as it once did. Journalist Cory Doctorow coined the term 'enshittification ' in 2022 to describe the pattern whereby the value to users of platforms – be it Amazon, TikTok, Facebook or Twitter – gradually declines over time. Doctorow argued that platforms start by offering something good to users (like an excellent search engine), then they abuse their users to serve business customers (search results buried under ads), and then they abuse both users and business customers to serve their shareholders. Documents released in 2023 as part of a US Department of Justice antitrust case against Google gave a rare insider view of the top of the company, revealing that in 2019 there were tensions over the direction of search. The documents suggested a boardroom struggle over whether Google's search team should be more focused on the effectiveness of the product, or on growing the number of user queries (a better search engine would mean fewer queries, and therefore fewer ads viewed). In one email, the head of search complained his team was 'getting too involved with ads for the good of the product'. Google said this weekend that this executive's testimony at trial had 'contextualised' these documents and clarified the company's focus on users. 'The changes we launch to search are designed to benefit users,' Google said. 'And to be clear: the organic results you see in search are not affected by our ads systems.' Carolan says it's impossible to know exactly what has happened within Google's algorithm, but the quality filters that were once in place to keep low-quality results further down the ranking seem to be struggling to hold back the tide. Visibility on Google can be gamed using certain practices known as search engine optimisation (SEO). SEO is the reason why, for example, online recipes often contain weird, boring essays above the list of ingredients. All publishers use SEO, but the quality of search results is degraded when low quality websites are able to abuse SEO to boost their Google ranking. 'Maybe investment within search engines are going more towards AI than they are towards just sustaining the core search product,' Carolan says. 'It's very hard to say because all of this is happening in very untransparent ways. Nobody gets to see how decisions are being made.' McIlraith says it's widely believed in her industry that recent changes to Google's algorithm – in particular an August 2022 update called, ironically, 'Helpful Content' – have corrupted results. She believes this is having a bigger impact in smaller markets such as Ireland, with more . websites appearing in Irish users' results, for example. 'A lot of people in my industry have been shouting about this, particularly in the past 18 months,' McIlraith says. Google said it makes thousands of changes to search every year to improve it, and it's continuously adapting to address new spam techniques. 'Our recent updates aim to connect people with content that is helpful, satisfying and original, from a diverse range of sites across the web,' it said. For what it's worth, Shrisnak doesn't use Google now, favouring DuckDuckGo, an alternative search engine based on Google that feels a lot like the Google of old. It doesn't collect user data (and is capable of correctly identifying the current government of Ireland). What happens next? Google says AI is getting us to stay where it wants us: on Google. CEO Sundar Pichai has suggested that AI encourages users to spend more time searching for answers online, growing the overall advertising market. Google says AI Overviews have increased usage by 10% for the type of queries that show overview results. Soon, Irish users are likely to see advertising integrated into AI Overview. The company is telling advertisers this will be a powerful tool, putting their ads in front of us at an important, previously inaccessible moment when we are just beginning to think about something. But AI raises existential questions for the production of content for the web as we know it, both in its ability to generate content and as it's being applied in search. In the jargon of digital marketing, the problem is known as 'zero click'. You ask Google a question and get an answer – maybe an AI-generated one – without ever having to click on a blue link. McIlraith says: 'The biggest challenge for all of my clients and the wider industry is that Google is flatly refusing to give us any data around zero click. We cannot see how much our brand is showing up in search results where no click is being attributed.' Until now, there was an unwritten contract: websites provided Google with information for free, and benefited from Google-generated traffic. This contract is broken when Google morphs into a single interface scraping the web to feed its AI in a way that negates the need to click through links to websites to find information. 'The challenge then really becomes, why would I create content?' McIlraith says. 'Why would I create content on my website just for these AIs to come along and scrape it?' Already there are challenges to ChatGPT's practices, with publishers led by the New York Times suing OpenAI over its use of copyrighted works. News/Media Alliance, the trade association representing all the biggest news publishers in the US, last month condemned AI Mode as 'the definition of theft'. 'Links were the last redeeming quality of search that gave publishers traffic and revenue,' the alliance said. 'Now Google just takes content by force.' Google CEO Sundar Pichai was grilled about this by US tech news website The Verge last week. He said AI Mode would provide sources, adding that for the past year Google has been sending traffic to a broader base of websites and this will continue. He did not give a definitive answer when asked by whether a 45% increase in web pages over the past two years was the result of more of the web being generated by AI, stating that 'people are producing a lot of content'. Carolan speculates that in the single interface, linkless future, with the business model of web publishing broken, the risk is that the internet starts to eat itself: regurgitating AI slop rather than sustaining the production of original material. The information Google's AI Mode and ChatGPT and the rest are feeding off will then degrade. Late stage enshittification. AI search itself may improve, but these improvements will be undermined by this disintegration of the information environment. Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone... Our Explainer articles bring context and explanations in plain language to help make sense of complex issues. We're asking readers like you to support us so we can continue to provide helpful context to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay. Learn More Support The Journal
The Irish Sun
a day ago
- The Irish Sun
UK holidaymakers will be fingerprinted each time they visit EU – with lengthy checks taking 6 minutes
BRITS heading to Europe this year will face lengthy checks as fingerprinting is issued each time they cross the border. The 1 Brits could face delays when crossing the border Credit: PA Those driving across the border will be asked to get out of their vehicle to be photographed and fingerprinted, adding up to six minutes to journey times. The big change will be phased in from November and will see "significant infrastructure" being built to support the thousands of people getting out of cars and buses. Operators say the system is a way of getting rid of stamping passports and keeping visitors' information digitally recorded. The manual checks come as Dover waits for the launch of an app being developed by Frontex, the European border agency. Read more on Travel The app will eventually minimise queues and won't require passengers' to get out of their vehicles. Border control will be given a tablet which they will pass through cars to verify individuals' identity. But according to Doug Bannister, the chief executive of the Port of Dover, the app won't be ready "any time before November". This means second, third, fourth time travellers still need to have a biometric captured at the border, he told Most read in News Travel This comes as the The talks mean Brits can join other EU tourists in the shorter queues. The New EU entry-exit system and EuropeTravel Visa (ETIAS) explained The Prime Minister said: "We will be and are pressing to get on with this straight away. "Because for holiday makers wanting to get out this summer, they will want to know that they can do so easily, without delay and chaos." Sir Keir Starmer said he wanted to see the deal done "as soon as possible" claiming there was now no "inhibition" to it getting done. He said: "Today's deal will also help British holidaymakers, confirming that they will be able to use e-gates when they travel to Europe, ending those huge queues at passport control. "And I call on all EU members to help make this a reality without delay.' The government said: "British holidaymakers will be able to use more e-gates in Europe, ending the dreaded queues at border control." Tim Alderslade, chief executive of trade body Airlines UK, added: "This is excellent news for British holidaymakers and will enable an even smoother passenger experience for families travelling to the EU."
