Marketer 2 marketer: Sarah Warby, Sainsbury’s

Sarah Warby Sainsburys

Claire Harper, Founder, IndiaCoco and former marketing director at Mamas and Papas and head of online at Sainsbury’s, asks:

“The brand’s involvement with the Paralympics was a brilliant example of a successful sponsorship, while own brand, improved general merchandise and the launch of Brand Match have also been reported as key strategic initiatives. The area that appears to be under the radar is the development of your online strategy. With the recent deal with Morrisons, Ocado brand certainly appears to be moving at pace. What is your view of Ocado Morrison deal and what are the key plans for Sainsbury’s online?”

Sarah Warby says:

“It is a buoyant and competitive market. As I’m sure every competitor does, we are obsessive in measuring our service metrics so we can be confident in the service we are giving our customers and our model is working.

Yes, it will hot up but it takes a while to learn how to do things well. We weren’t first in [to selling online] but we have learnt our lessons and we know how to run our business and we will keep doing it conscientiously.

But whenever there is a new competitive dynamic, what is important to remember is that it all starts with our customers and what they expect of us and [we say] let’s be better at being us than panic about what everybody else is doing.”

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