Speaking at the conference today, John Clare, the former group chief executive of DSG International, told delegates what he would do if he ran a hypermarket.

He said: “I must tell you, if I was running a hypermarket and was limited to 100,000 square feet of space, I wonder why I would take electricals at all.

“As we all know, here is a market where margins are low, bottom line profit is even thinner and return levels and customer complexity issues are enormous.

“If I was a Tesco, there would be lots of other categories I would choose before going into electricals.”

That said, Mr Clare predicted that hypermarkets – in which he singled out Argos, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Tesco – will gain market share, “even if they don’t make much money from electricals”.