Breakfast briefing: Retail news on Morrisons, Co-op and Regent Street

Morrisons store management reshuffle could result in up to 2,000 job losses

Morrisons is poised to reveal a management restructuring within weeks that could see redundancies of up to 2,000 jobs in its stores, according to The Guardian. It is thought the move is expected to impact managers responsible for product categories such as fresh food and non-food across the supermarket giant’s 500 outlets.

Asda to acquire five Co-op shops

The Co-operative Food will offload five of its shops to Asda as part of the embattled convenience group’s plans to dispose of larger stores. The five sites being sold are in Marple, Alsager in Cheshire, Pyle near Bridgend, Strelley in Nottinghamshire and Tranent in East Lothian, according to Insider Media.

The Co-operative Group said: “All the stores are being sold as going concerns, and all 250 staff will transfer to the new operator with their terms and conditions of employment maintained.”

Regent Street owners to introduce smartphone app with beacon technology in stores

Regent Street owner The Crown Estate will deploy a new smartphone app that takes advantage of location-aware beacon technology to deliver discounts, new-product promotions and other alerts to the smartphones of shoppers as they walk past stores and restaurants. The app allows users to indicate their shopping preferences by swiping up or down on a series of 40 well-known brands. The app will then build up a customer profile to determine which brands they see marketing messages from.

Every store along Regent Street is likely to deploy ibeacons to broadcast offers.