Jim Armitage: As the going gets tough, supermarket takes a risky detour

Trading figures from Sainsbury’s and Next tell you a simple, clear message: running shops is tough, and getting tougher. Everywhere you look, prices are falling, competitors are improving, shoppers are skint.

As such, the last thing big chains need is for management to be distracted by, for example, ambitious takeovers of large, troubled businesses.

Yet Sainsbury’s remains convinced its deal for Argos comes at the right time, at the right price.

From the numbers coming out of the supermarkets lately, it’s hard to agree.

Discounting is already savage and is about to get far worse thanks to Sainsbury’s recuperating rival, Tesco.

And the Tesco juggernaut is only just getting started, using its far bigger pricing power and efficiencies of scale to batter its peers.

Yet, just as its once-mighty rival fires up again, Sainsbury’s is to be diverted by the hefty project of converting Argos’s stores to digital and arresting the sharp decline in its new chain’s sales.

Sainsbury sees Argos as a game changer. But not all change is for the better.