Morrisons and Sainsburys top the responsibility ranking among the Big Four.

To understand how supermarkets were performing in terms of actual purchasing we calculated the percentage of purchases made at each store that were responsibly motivated in some way, based on answers provided by respondents for each purchase.

An unlikely pairing of Sainsbury’s and Morrison’s top the chart among the Big Four, while Tesco and Asda lag behind on responsible purchases, heading towards the value led discounter stores. Interestingly this is reflected in recent retailer performance figures with Morrison’s and Sainsbury’s showing the best financial performance.

Responsible Purchases

While Asda shoppers (25%) are as likely to have a ‘responsible’ attitude as Morrison’s shoppers (25%), they are the least likely shoppers of the Big Four to actually buy responsibly (12%). Sainsbury’s have the most responsibly aligned customers (29%) and the most responsible purchasers (21%).

Consumers told us all of the reasons they bought a particular product which broke down into six clusters; Value, Habit, Shelf Appeal, Circumstance, Health and Responsibility.

While there were clear differences between the main four supermarkets across all of these purchase criteria, the most interesting story appears when we look at the individual components of value vs responsible reasons for purchase.