Former operations

Kiddicare

In 2011, Morrisons bought children's retailer Kiddicare for £70m to give it the knowledge to sell clothing and homewares online.^[67] In 2012 10 former Best Buy stores from the Carphone Warehouse were acquired to expand Kiddicare into retail stores.^[68] In March 2014 Morrisons CEO Dalton Phillips announced the company's intention of selling Kiddicare. The company was sold to the Endless private equity firm for £2 million in July 2014, only to be sold on to Worldstores two months later (in September 2014) for an undisclosed sum.^[69]

FreshDirect

Morrisons purchased a 10% stake in New York-based online grocer FreshDirect for £31 million in 2011. After having sent a team to New York to learn from the business ahead of the predicted launch in 2013, Morrisons began a home delivery initiative in January 2014. In March 2014 Morrisons CEO Dalton Phillips announced the company had agreed to sell its stake in FreshDirect due to financial difficulties the company was facing and, as it had set up its own online shopping site, it no longer needed FreshDirect.^[70] The sale was completed in August 2016 for £45 million.^[71]

Convenience stores

Morrisons M local, Church Street, Liverpool

The company operated a number of smaller stores called "Morrisons M Local" in major places such as Birmingham, Manchester Cardiff and Bristol. These stores had a similar format to small Tesco Express and Sainsbury's Local stores, but included a wider range of ready-to-eat hot food such as pastries, coffee, rotisserie, porridge and also a salad bar, items are stocked from nearby superstores and shoppers can also order foods in including fresh meat and fish.^[72]
A distribution centre in Feltham, West London was acquired to provide a distribution network to the stores in London and the South East where there are few superstores.^[73]
Around 70 stores were opened by the end of 2013, which was boosted by the purchase of 7 Jessops and 49 Blockbuster stores from administrators.^[74] On 26 February 2013, a further 6 HMV stores were acquired from administrators.^[75] The M Local chain was sold to a private equity group in 2015 and rebranded My Local, but this went into administration itself less than a year later.^[76]

Marketing and branding

Logos and slogans

The Morrisons logo, 1980-March 2007

The Morrisons logo, April 2007 until October 2015

On 15 March 2007, Morrisons announced that it would ditch its existing branding and strapline in favour of a more modern brand image. Their lower price option brand, Bettabuy, was also changed to a more modern brand called the Morrisons Value range.^[77]
The change saw the replacement of the old yellow and black logo, with the "More reasons to shop at Morrisons" strap line replaced with "Fresh choice for you". In 2010 this was replaced by "Eat Fresh. Pay less." This was later changed again in 2013 to "More of what matters". It also involved the replacement of external signage, with the previous Morrisons signs being retained alongside the new logo, as well as changes to product packaging, point of sale, advertising, staff uniforms (replacing the old blue ties and bows with green ones) and distribution vehicles. The rationale behind the decision was the need for Morrisons to attract a wider national customer base, capitalising on its expanded geographical spread following the acquisition of Safeway.^[78] However, in 2016 Morrisons released a new logo to try and draw on the brand's heritage, with the new logo being installed an all store signs as well as new uniforms and new in-store looks.^[79]

Loyalty card

The Morrisons Match & More card price matched the chain's customers' comparable grocery shopping in store and online with Aldi, Lidl, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda. If a customer spent £15 or more and could have paid less for their comparable groceries, Morrisons automatically gave them the difference in points on their card at the checkout. For 1p difference in the cost of shopping, customers got 10 Match points – and for £1 difference they got 1,000 points. The difference was calculated at the checkout on national brands and comparable own label products and fresh food, even those that are on promotion elsewhere.^[80] In 2016 the Match & More loyalty cards were rebranded as the "More" loyalty card and all customers were issued a new card in line with the rebranding.^[81]