Morrisons axes ‘bullshitter’ Philips

morrisons axes bullshitter philipsMorrisons’ boss Dalton Philips has finally paid the price for the retailer’s disastrous performance – six months after his Tesco counterpart Philip Clarke was booted out – following accusations that his strategy was bullshit.
The retailer announced that Dalton was stepping down after five years in charge as it reported a like-for-like sales fall of 3.1% in the six weeks to January 4.
Not that the move is entirely unexpected; last June former Morrisons chairman Sir Ken Morrison launched a scathing attack on Philips’ strategy. At the time he said: “When I left work and started working as a hobby, I chose to raise cattle. I have something like 1,000 bullocks and, having listened to your presentation, Dalton, you’ve got a lot more bullshit than me.”
And Andrew Higginson, who is due to become chairman later this month, said the company’s board believed the push to return the business to growth was “best done under new leadership”.
In the trading update, the retailer praised its new Match & More loyalty card, which offers customers points if their shop would have cost less at Asda, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Aldi and Lidl.
However it refused to say how many customers had signed up to the scheme, simply saying: “Match & More launched well, sign-up is ahead of our expectations, and customer feedback has been excellent.”
Phil Dorrell, director of retail consultants, Retail Remedy, said: “If other members of the Big Four supermarkets are the squeezed middle, Morrisons is being steamrollered flat. The departure of its chief executive was grimly inevitable.
“With the most dated stores and weakest business strategy of the old guard grocers, Morrisons has haemorrhaged both sales and share to the brash young discounters who took its cheap prices USP, improved it, and then unceremoniously yanked the rug from underneath it.”

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  1. RT DM_editor: Morrisons axes ‘bullshitter’ Dalton Philips http://t.co/xN1dtahNuZ #digitalmarketing #loyalty #retailstrategy

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