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Wal-Mart: A bully benefactor

So good it is doing it twice: MS repeats 20%-off sale day

Guardian Unlimited

- 1 days and 18 hours ago

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/28111?ns=guardianpageName=Business%3A+So+good+it+is+doing+it+twice%3A+M%26amp%3BS+repeats+20%25-off+sale+daych=Businessc3=The+Guardianc4=Marks+and+Spencer+Group+%28Business%29%2CDebenhams+%28Business%29%2CJohn+Lewis%2CRetail+industry+%28Business%29%2CBusinessc5=Business+Marketsc6=Julia+Finchc7=2008_12_03c8=1127766c9=articlec10=GUc11=Businessc12=Marks+%26+Spencerc13=c14=h2=GU%2FBusiness%2FMarks+%26+Spencer" width="1" height="1" //divpMarks Spencer is to repeat its 20%-off pre-Christmas sale tomorrow as high street stores continue to struggle to pull in shoppers./ppThe MS discount day comes just a fortnight after MS slashed pre-Christmas prices for the first time in four years in a bid to tempt shoppers and shift unsold stock. It is expected to apply to the same goods as before, including some alcohol./ppWith Christmas looming, retailers are becoming increasingly panicky that they are going to fall well short of sales targets and be left with mountains of stock that will have to be marked down in the January sales. In stores ranging from electricals to fashion and furnishings they report that goods are only shifting when shoppers are offered big discounts. Similarly, the supermarkets are engaged in a fierce price war on everything from flat-screen televisions to fish fingers./ppThe swift repeat of the MS sale day suggests that high street stores have seen little impact in their tills of this week's 2.5 percentage point cut in VAT. The tax cut, designed to encourage spending, was announced by the chancellor in last week's pre-budget report and took effect on Monday, although many stores brought the cut forward by a few days./ppMS's sale will run in the middle of another three-day Debenhams sale. Today, Thursday and Friday the Debenhams chain is offering up to 20% off across the store and its action will force at least one other retailer, John Lewis, to offer reductions./ppThe John Lewis chain's "Never Knowingly Undersold" price promise means it always matches the lowest prices available on the high street for branded goods. It normally makes these reductions in a low-profile way, but last week, when it slashed prices to match those on offer at House of Fraser, it highlighted its response to the "competitor's event" on its website. A spokeswoman said the group had decided it had to "shout louder" about its price matching./ppJohn Lewis sales, which are regarded as a bellwether for the retail sector and for the state of consumer confidence in middle England, have been suffering for many weeks, but in November they lurched downwards. For the last three weeks they have been more than 13% below last year's levels and the most recent detailed figures show every store is having problems. Five stores, including Cribbs Causeway in Bristol and one in Nottingham, were down by more than 20%./ppDebenhams, which regularly holds pre-Christmas sales, was the first major retailer to announce its price cutting campaign this year. Yesterday it claimed it had "sparked one of the biggest price wars ever seen on the high street". The store chain said that shopper numbers increased by two-thirds during its last sale days./ppHowever, independent research group SPSL, which counts the number of shoppers on the high street, suggested the sales of a fortnight ago had not had anything like that impact. It calculated a 4% boost to shopper numbers that week. Another research group suggested the sales were not whetting shoppers' appetite for spending and were merely pulling forward sales which would have been made anyway. Just a few days after the last MS sale, shopper numbers were 8% down on 2007 levels./pp"We are back by popular demand," said deputy chief executive of Debenhams Michael Sharp. "It is as simple as that. What is more, we are not forcing people to shop on just one day, unlike some stores."/ppSharp has been among the gloomiest retailers about the prospects for this Christmas season. He recently said that the retail sector is "staring into the face of the worst Christmas we have ever had"./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/marksspencer"Marks Spencer/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/debenhams"Debenhams/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/johnlewis"John Lewis/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/retail"Retail industry/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/4koFLiYswS_IepsRK-jnHbtUCAw/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/4koFLiYswS_IepsRK-jnHbtUCAw/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

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