Finally Easter marks the transition between winter and spring. The weather bucks up and the clocks change. Some things, however, stay the same. Somewhere across the country a shopper fails to find something they would dearly like to buy - the major culprit in this case being Tesco.

The category under the microscope this month is ice cream. No longer a hot-weather-only category, there is now a broad variety to choose from everywhere and, while there are still vast peaks of sales of convenience product (in particular) in hot weather, the category is really an everyday dessert. The largest range of products that we found were in Sainsbury, with 100 on offer. It also nearly tied for highest proportion on promotion with Morrisons, closely followed by Tesco. Tesco, however, had the shortest range on offer in the stores that we checked.

Promotions also happen right across the year, as do category sales. The availability scores, however, were again something of a surprise, with Tesco clearly failing its customers in this area, doubling normal issues with a third of its promotion product either out of stock or at risk.

No-one else comes close to this unenviable result, with all of the other multiples comfortably beating their normal averages.

Sadly, Tesco also follows through with a similar poor performance in its normal sales area. The only group doing worse than its average is Somerfield, but even here it is only a third worse than its normal average. The remainder improve on their normal performance.

This is perhaps what you might expect in the cooler weather of the post-Christmas period. When, however, you add warmer weather to hot promotions, Tesco may have some serious cause for concern in this area.

On the other hand, shoppers in all of the rest of the multiples can rely on getting most of their just desserts most of the time.

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