Losses for the big four

Serious challenges as market structure continues to change

The latest grocery share figures from Kantar Worldpanel, published today for the 12 weeks ending 30 March 2014, show what appears to be a dramatic market slowdown, with growth of only 0.6% ‒ however this is distorted by the late falling of Easter this year, which was included in the 2013 period but not in the current data. Kantar Worldpanel estimates that Easter accounts for market growth of 0.9%. This means that a ‘corrected’ market growth would stand at 1.5%, which is still low by historical standards.

Edward Garner, director at Kantar Worldpanel explains: “Amid a challenging market backdrop, individual retailer growth might be expected to be restricted.  This is certainly not the case for Aldi which achieved its highest ever growth of 35.3%, boosting the retailer to a record market share of 4.6%. Lidl also experienced strong growth in a record breaking month, and now accounts for 3.4% of the market.

All of the ‘big four’ supermarkets have faced declining sales over the past 12 weeks, which has been accentuated by the late falling of Easter. Nevertheless, they have also seen worrying share declines, with the most resilient performance coming from Asda this period.

Waitrose continues to hold on to its record 5.0% share reached last period, while The Co-operative appears to have stemmed its share losses, managing to hold its current 6.1% share over our past four reports.  Frozen food outlet Farmfoods is performing well, reaching a record share of 0.8%."

The May announcement of the supermarket market share will be delayed by one day due to the May Day Bank Holiday. As such the next announcement of supermarket market share data will be Wednesday May 7th 2014 at 9.30am. 

The figures referenced in this news story relate to data as published at the time. Kantar Worldpanel data is periodically reworked to reflect improved methodology. This may result in some minor restatement of historical grocer shares.