What has almost 1,000 pages and sells everything from air beds to yoga mats? It’s not Argos’s latest big book, but Tesco’s.

In fact, the Argos catalogue is the bigger of the two - about two thirds of British households have a copy - but the growth of Tesco Direct is one of the factors likely to be making life tougher for the Home Retail-owned catalogue store group.

It has been a while since the slogan ‘Don’t shop for it, Argos it’ reflected consumer behaviour. So out of favour with investors is Home Retail that next week it is likely to be ejected from the FTSE 100 blue-chip index.

Home Retail will reveal trading next Thursday, when investors will seek reassurance that it is on a stronger footing. In the period up until the end of May, Argos suffered an 8.1% like-for-like sales fall and total turnover was down 5.2%.

Along with the sales patterns and the big grocers’ incursion into non-food, investors have been fretting about margin because of currency pressures and shipping costs, although the retailer reassured that the impact would be “negligible” in the second half.

Home Retail said in June that profitability this year will probably be similar to that achieved last year. For many investors that is worrying. Certainly Argos has scale, and its pioneering ecommerce initiatives have given it enviable strengths, but the business seems to be caught in the doldrums at present. Its message on price, the diversity of its range and convenience of shopping options seems to be making a limited impact on consumers and a greater sense of urgency is needed.

There has been gossip about a buyout of Home Retail, but no bid has ever emerged. There has been speculation that Asda, which wants to be number one in non-food, might pounce but it hasn’t yet.

To win greater buy-in from investors and regain its blue-chip status, Argos needs to show it can deploy selling self-help measures as impressive as those it has brought to bear on efficiency.