Breakfast briefing: Retail news on Morrisons, Sainsbury's and LK Bennett

Morrisons’ mobile head Sienne Veit leaves supermarket chain

Morrisons’ head of mobile Sienne Veit has exited the supermarket chain 18 months after she joined from M&S to take on the newly created role. At Morrisons, Veit was responsible for its mobile website, applications and payments, as well as user experience and web design for all Kiddicare and Morrisons.com websites, in-store multichannel and connected applications.

Her LinkedIn profile states that she departed from Morrisons in September to work as a director at Invisible Stuff, which works with brands, retailers, technology companies and startups engaged in omnichannel retail. Morrisons is not commenting on her departure. Morrisons declined to comment, Veit confirmed her departure to Retail Week.

Sainsbury’s overtakes Asda’s market share

Sainsbury’s has overtaken Asda’s market share to become the second largest UK supermarket, The Belfast Telegraph reported. With 16.8% of the market, it is now second to Tesco and has also enjoyed an increase in profits of 9% on the same time last year. It was the best performing of the so-called ‘big four’ supermarkets, and the only one to have increased its market share in the period.

Morrisons launches first affiliate marketing programme

Morrisons’ first affiliate marketing programme has been launched, working with supplier Tradedoubler as it targets consumers with the promotion of its online wine cellar platform, The Drum reported. The supermarket chain is intending to push Morrisons Cellar, which hosts over 1,000 wines and wine-related content, by running a range of deals, discounts and offers.

L.K. Bennett selects Amplience’s Adaptive Media Platform

Shoe specialist L.K. Bennett has chosen Amplience’s Adaptive Media Platform to enhance its online website merchandising across campaign and product pages, Marketwatch reported. Amplience helps L.K. Bennett to produce and deliver creative marketing and merchandising content in-house.

The platform improves on-page conversion rates by delivering an engaging visual experience including zoom and 360-spin. Dynamic Media enables the optimisation of images for different channels, including smartphone and tablet platforms. The platform has allowed designers to create product media such as 360-spin and zoom. In the future, L.K. Bennett will include video more heavily across its campaigns and use Amplience to enable click-to-shop functionality.