The performance of Britain's third biggest supermarket chain by market share is likely to fall well short of its rivals, despite efforts to broaden its range of non-food items to pull in more customers ahead of Christmas.
Sainsbury, the UK market leader until 1995 and now in third place behind Tesco and Wal-Mart's Asda, has been struggling to kick-start sales even after spending billions of pounds to modernise stores, computer systems and distribution depots to make up for a decade of under-investment.