INTRODUCTION

Founded in 1989, Asda’s clothing brand George can now be found in 560 stores across the UK (Asda, 2018). In 2017 they had sales of £1.6 billion, a 2.6% increase on the previous year (Dover, 2018). It is clear from Mintel’s November 2018 report that value clothing is an important market for supermarkets with 47% of people having bought clothing from a supermarket in store and 20% online in the year ending August 2018 (Carroll, 2018). Asda’s success with in store clothing sales is largely due to encouraging impulse purchasing through the positioning of the George department within their superstores, often near the entrance to the store.

The demand for value clothing began mainly around the recession in 2008 and has grown since then with consumers beginning to realise they can get good quality clothing at an affordable price from supermarkets and other value retailers like Matalan.

George was the most shopped at supermarket clothing brand in 2018 across all areas of fashion. 39% of people shopped there for womenswear, 31% of menswear and 29% for childrenswear (Carroll, 2018). In addition, the George brand is within the top 10 UK clothing retailers across all sectors. Its market share places it as the 9th largest UK clothing retailer (Dover, 2018). George Asda pride themselves on providing quality, style and value to the families they aim their clothing towards. They offer a vast range of clothing styles and sizes with their womenswear ranging from a size 6/8 to 24, and menswear sizes S to XXXL.

1