Tesco boosts share of UK non-food sector

Tesco is on track to become the UK’s number one non-food retailer, a new report says.

Its expansion into clothing, electricals, entertainment and homeware has boosted its share of the £168bn (€248.5bn) sector.

It is set to overtake the Argos Retail Group, the company behind Argos and Homebase, to become the UK’s biggest non-food retailer this year, market analysts Verdict say.

Tesco is already the UK’s biggest grocery retailer ahead of rival chains Asda and Sainsbury’s.

Report author Alistair Lockhart said Tesco’s huge customer base had helped its expansion into non-food.

“One of the things that gives Tesco a massive advantage is it gets tremendous footfall coming through the door,” he said.

“By allocating more and more space to non-food they are able to attract a lot of sales by having a high-profile, competitive position.”

Verdict predicts that Tesco will take a 3.6% slice of the non-food market this year, up from 3.2% last year.

This will put it ahead of the Argos Retail Group’s 3.5%.

Mr Lockhart said the big players still had relatively small percentages of the non-food sector because the market was so fragmented. Non-food includes everything apart from groceries.

Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s together outperformed the rest of the non-food market by almost doubling their combined share of the sector in the five years to 2005, Verdict’s report says.