HITWISE GROCERY UPDATE

ASDA and Somerfield – a near-perfect online match

London, 27 April 2005
ASDA is the latest suitor eyeing Somerfield for a potential takeover and Hitwise data shows that ASDA and Somerfield may be a match made in heaven – at least online.

With 5 times as many offline stores than ASDA, the lure of Somerfield is obvious to ASDA who is struggling to topple Tesco from the #1 spot among grocery stores. However, in order for the acquisition to be considered successful, ASDA would need to retain Somerfield customers.

An analysis by Hitwise, global leader in real-time competitive intelligence, reveals that www.somerfield.co.uk and www.asda.co.uk attract a nearly identical profile of user – albeit from very different geographic areas. This indicates that Somerfield offers ASDA an opportunity to attract customers from new geographic regions, while maintaining its brand strength among bargain hunters.

Profile of online visits

ASDA and Somerfield attract an almost identical profile of visitor to their websites. The largest share of visits to both sites comes from Social Grade D/E, representing one third of visits to each site. Just over half of visitors to the websites are from the Social Grades A/B and C1. There is less than a three percent difference in the share of visits from each social grade to the sites.                                                                                 

This consistency in the profile of the customer will be an important consideration for ASDA to ensure its brand will appeal to Somerfield customers.

Geographic Breakdown:

The other factor favouring a successful union between ASDA and Somerfield is the geographic breakdown of visitors to each site. There is very little overlap in terms of the location of the visits to the two websites.

The geographic regions from which ASDA attracts a higher index of visitors (compared to the online population) are: North East, North West, Yorkshire, Scotland and East Midlands. The areas where Somerfield is over-indexed versus the online population are: South West, West Midlands, East, East Midlands and Scotland. There are only two regional areas in which both websites are over-indexed, indicating a lack of cross-over in the visitors to the websites.

About Hitwise:

Hitwise is the world’s leading online competitive intelligence service. Each day, Hitwise monitors how more than 25 million Internet users interact with over 500,000 websites across 160 industry categories.

By monitoring more people, more websites, more often, Hitwise provides marketers with timely and actionable marketing insights on how their online presence compares to competitive websites.  Companies use this information to maximize the return on their online investment, in efforts such as search marketing, affiliate programs, online advertising, visitor segmentation, content development and lead generation.

Hitwise collects Internet usage information via a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in mega panels, and complies with local and international privacy legislation as audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Founded in 1997, Hitwise is a privately held company, headquartered in New York City and operates in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. 

More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.co.uk

For media enquiries, please contact:

Jannie Cahill
jannie.cahill@hitwise.com

Tel: 020 7378 3619