Morrison Supermarkets plc (LSE: MRW) is the fourth biggest chain of shopping centres in the United Kingdom. The business is usually mentioned to and is labelled as Morrisons, and it is part of the FTSE 100 Index of companies. Morrisons' market share as of December 2008 is at 11.8%, making it the least significant of the "Big Four" supermarkets, behind Tesco (30.9%), Asda (16.8%) and Sainsbury's (16%), but far ahead of the fifth place Co-operative assembly, which has a share of 4.4%(Wrigley,2002).
Originally founded by William Morrison in 1899, it started out as an egg and dairy spread stall in Rawson Market, Bradford, England. Until 2004, Morrisons store positions were mainly concentrated in the north of England, but with the takeover of Safeway in that year, the company now has a total of 417 superstores over the UK. The Morrison family currently owns around 15.5% of the company (Burt and Sparks, 2003, 237-254).
Introduction
The overall emphasis on non-price characteristics and the relative importance of the different characteristics in UK provides opportunities for retail managers to differentiate their firms away from pure price competition. These consumer responses have been important in shaping the marketing strategies of the food retail Morrison Supermarket Service Marketing and have allowed a range of strategies which range from an emphasis on discount prices, to pure quality and service considerations(Whyte, 2002).
These strategic main headings are powerfully sustained by promotional programmes which focus the characteristics of the stores rather than the products which are stocked. In Hughes (1994) information is presented which shows that food retailing Morrison Service Marketing stores are ranked number one, nine and eleven in terms of their advertising expenditure amongst all stores, which demonstrates the overall importance of promotional activities to this Morrison service marketing (Wrigley and 2002). These undertakings permit retailers to evolve their own emblems' or images which are unaligned of the emblems that are sold, and are expected to be the source of command which food retailers are reputed to exert over manufacturers(Segal, 1998).
Positioning of retail Morrison service marketing
In recent years food retail Morrison Supermarket had pursued strategies which have provided consumers with increasingly diversified opportunities for purchasing food. The consideration above has shown that these developments have been made likely by the wide variety and changing environment of buyer requirements. Morrison Supermarket has identified the possibilities and has developed appropriate strategies to compete in the market place.
The concept of competitive strategies is clearly developed by Porter (1980) and has become an accepted approach for analysing the manner in which Morrison Supermarket within an industry competes to attain market share or enhanced ...