SUPERMARKETS are good for market towns, research by the University of Southampton has found.

A three-year study, paid for by Tesco, has found that where stores are built on town centre or edge-of-town sites they encourage fewer residents to leave to do their shopping.

There is also the benefit of more people travelling to towns, with a significant "spill over" of shoppers visiting other independent shops on their trips.

The survey, which gathered evidence from 8,000 consumers and 1,000 traders in eight towns around the country, found that two-thirds of consumers believe that a year after opening new supermarkets benefit towns.

Six of the towns studied saw new supermarkets open, including branches of Tesco, Waitrose and Morrison's, while the other two were treated as control examples for comparison.