M&S hunts growth with family-sized products

Marks & Spencer is launching an assault on traditional supermarkets by expanding its ranges targeted at families.

In the latest move to convince more customers to do their weekly shop at M&S, it is increasing the number of products sold in larger pack sizes.

The High Street retailer has traditionally been seen as a place to pick up certain items – from picnic food to bakery treats – rather than for basic grocery staples.

But it is ramping up its appeal on this front by increasing its ‘bigger pack, better value’ range by a third, to more than 100 products, such as eggs and avocados.

And it has separately released dozens of new cupboard essentials including painkillers, baby food and laundry pods.

It comes as the business attempts to draw a line under a wounding cyber attack which disrupted its online operations for more than a month.

Britain’s biggest supermarkets, Tesco and Sainsbury’s, have been going from strength to strength and boosting their market share in recent months.

But M&S has also been growing its share for food.

It was tied with fellow Middle England retailer Waitrose with a 3.7 per cent slice for the three months to June 15, according to the most recent figures from market research firm Nielsen IQ.

Boss Stuart Machin last week set out plans to beef up the retailer’s store estate, including an investment of more than £300m to open 16 shops and update 21 others this year. It is part of a strategy to have 180 department stores and 420 food halls by 2028.

M&S has said it wants to be a ‘shopping list’ retailer – a go-to destination for families looking to bulk buy staples.

And it believes this approach has helped to increase shoppers’ basket sizes.

Alex Freudmann, managing director at M&S Food, said: ‘When we talk about being a shopping list retailer, it means that customers can trust us to have what they need when they come shopping, in the right size and at the right price.

‘As we always say at M&S, there’s still lots of opportunity to go further and really cement M&S as the destination for families to get everything they need, at the quality you can only get from M&S.’

Machin last week insisted its online operation will be ‘fully on’ by the end of the month as it recovers from the hack he predicted could cost the group around £300m.