Supermarket chain, Sainsbury’s, had its best-ever Christmas this year and claimed that 22.6 million customers visited its stores in the last week before Christmas. The 23rd December was the busiest ever day of trading in the history of Sainsbury’s.

Sainsbury’s, one of the four big grocers in the UK, reported that overall like-for-like festive sales, excluding fuel, grew 4.5% in 13 weeks ending January 3. It also saw highest ever trading for Christmas and New Year’s Eve. It registered record online home delivery service order during this period.

Sainsbury’s better than forecast trading performance, a high growth of 4.3% on supermarket’s 2nd quarter sales, has put market leader Tesco under pressure.

Tesco’s sales growth fell sharply to 2% last year due to heavy investment in discounts and tough competition.

Sainsbury’s reported satisfactory growth in non-food offering such as high-price toys and promotional gifts in which 3 million toys could be sold in seven days. Its cheaper ‘basics’ range sales sky rocketed more than 40% year-on-year.

The company was delighted with performance of its own Tu brand promotional gifts and clothing sale which clinched 2.3% market share for Sainsbury’s and made it 8th largest clothing retailer by volume in the UK.

Chief executive Justin King asserted that Sainsbury’s would continue investing in price and promotions for progress in spite of challenging economic climate which is likely to continue during 2009.

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