Tesco and Sainsbury are missing out on a major sales opportunity through poor product availability, according to new research by Taylor Nelson Sofres revealed at the Schroder Salomon Smith Barney Food Retailing conference.

Data from TNS Superpanel for the eight weeks to September 15 revealed more than 15% of customers from Tesco and Sainsbury were emerging from shopping trips unable to purchase everything they wanted.

When asked, ‘Were you able to buy everything that you had wanted on this trip?,’ Morrisons came out on top with a 98% ‘yes’ rating , ahead of Waitrose, at 89.5% and Asda at 87.1%.

At the bottom of the list were Sainsbury at 83.8% and Tesco at 84.1%, supporting growing anecdotal evidence that the number one and two players in the market have been having problems getting products on to shelves.

For more on this story see this week’s issue of The Grocer magazine and also checkout the Insight pages for a breakdown of The Grocer 33 shopping basket.