Talk:Mike Coupe

Consideration of changes
My name is Sophie and I work in the communications team at Sainsbury’s.

I’m aware of Wikipedia’s COI rules, and so I wanted to ask for some help in reviewing this page as it could do with being fleshed out a bit and it appears that the Controversies section is out of balance compared to the rest of the entry’s content. I wanted to make some suggestions both to beef up the biographical sections, correct some factual errors, improve citations and slightly reduce the controversies section so that the entry has better overall balance. I'd be incredibly grateful if an editor would review the entry and consider my suggestions.

I have listed some suggested changes to the entry and have included citations in case that’s helpful. Also, apologies in advance for any errors in formatting or syntax - I don't edit and I’m new to Wikipedia so I’m still learning.

1.	To flesh out Mike’s biographical details, I suggest adding the following to the Career section, Sainsbury’s sub-section, which outlines some key milestones in Mike’s career:


 * ‘Mike Coupe was appointed CEO of Sainsbury’s in 2014. Soon after his appointment he announced a strategic review that aimed to address the challenges caused by a changing retail market.’ Sources for this include these articles in The Mirror, the Telegraph and International Business Times.


 * ‘In 2016 he spearheaded the takeover of Home Retail Group which included Argos and Habitat.’ Sources here in the Financial Times and The Guardian.


 * ‘In March 2018 he announced new industry-leading pay for colleagues.’ Sources here in the Independent and here in the Mirror.


 * ‘More recently, Coupe has overseen digital transformation and investment at Sainsbury’s, including the introduction of the UK’s first till-free store and the digitisation of Nectar through a new app and website.’ Sources for both of these initiatives are in the Mail on Sunday, City A.M. and The Mirror.

2.	The Controversies section contains some wording that doesn’t appear to be objective and is in some instances factually incorrect. Simply removing some of this language would make the entry more strictly factual and reduce the proportion relating to this single controversy. The copy that reads ‘It was also reported that Coupe would make over six hundred thousand pounds from the merger thus reinforcing the beliefs of many that CEO pay is unfairly high in contrast to large numbers of workers below them that earn significantly lower wages’ is factually incorrect and has no citation. Therefore, I’d suggest removing everything from 'This angered…’ through to ‘…significantly lower wages.' In its place, I suggest inserting the following: ‘The video was widely shared and critiqued’, which feels more neutral.

3.	The final sentence of the Controversies section is factually inaccurate and isn’t supported by the citation. We would suggest replacing it with: ‘In 2019 he was criticised for reducing the amount traditionally paid towards a Christmas party for Argos colleagues, bringing it in line with money paid towards the Sainsbury’s colleagues’ Christmas party.’

4.	Within the Career section there is a missing citation for the following statement: ‘He previously worked with, and at one point worked above Justin King at Asda.’ Please can I request that this be removed?

I would really appreciate any support at all in rebalancing this page and I hope it comes across clearly that these are just suggestions, to try to make the entry more accurate and balanced. Please let me know if you have any questions. SPraill (talk) 09:52, 21 January 2020 (UTC)