British supermarket chain J Sainsbury Plc said its underlying UK sales growth was just 0.1 percent in its third quarter on Monday as upgrades to systems and distribution depots disrupted sales.
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.