Netto, the Denmark-based discount retailer, is to step up its efforts to improve its image in the eyes of UK consumers, the company has told just-food.

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Claus Juel-Jensen, chairman of Netto International, said today (13 November) that the company would look to change the way it is perceived in the UK as consumer appetite for discount stores grows amid the economic downturn.


UK consumers, Jensen said, did not view Netto in the same way as the company’s rival discounters, Aldi and Lidl.


“We perhaps don’t have the starte-of the-art image as a company from area to area and store to store and that is one of the things we are working on,” Jensen told just-food.


Jensen was speaking after it was announced that Richard Lancaster, managing director of Netto UK, was to leave the company to take up an undisclosed post at a large retailer.

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Jensen praised Lancaster for educating Netto about the differences between consumers in the UK and in continental Europe.


“I credit him with opening our eyes to the differences between the UK market compared to the continental European market. Consumer perception has a much higher impact in the UK than in continental Europe,” Jensen said.


Lancaster joined Netto three years ago and Jensen said he was “sorry” to see the head of the company’s UK business leave.


“He has taken the company forward [but] he was offered a major career opportunity with one of the big UK multiples and I could not compete with that,” Jensen said.


Netto has 191 stores in the UK generating annual sales of around GBP900m (US$1.34bn).


According to data from market analysts TNS Worldpanel, Netto saw its UK sales rise 4% during the 12 weeks to the 2 November. By contrast, Aldi’s sales rose 23.9%, while Lidl saw its sales climb 11%.


Aldi, Lidl and Netto saw their combined share of the UK grocery market hit a record 6.2% during the same period, TNS said.

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