British consumers win with lower Grocery prices

The latest grocery share figures from Kantar Worldpanel, published today for the 12 weeks ending 26 April 2015, show supermarket sales have slowed to a revenue growth of 0.2% compared to last year.

Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel, explains: “Growth in the market has declined thanks to a record low for grocery price deflation: a typical basket of everyday items is now 2.1% cheaper than it was in 2014. Lower costs are the result of both falling commodity prices and the ongoing supermarket price war, with all major retailers offering cheaper like-for-like goods.

“This is good news for consumers, saving the average household £20 in the last three months. But many of the country’s largest grocers have struggled to enjoy substantial growth, with lower prices taking £532 million out of supermarket tills.”
More shoppers through the door have helped Sainsbury’s to be the strongest performer among the ‘Big Four’, despite a 0.2% fall in sales. Growing slightly behind the market, its share now stands at 16.5%, down 0.1 percentage points on last year. Performance has been boosted by the increased focus on non-food items and the chain’s strength in London, where grocery sales are growing faster than elsewhere in the country.

Fraser McKevitt continues: “German discounters Aldi and Lidl continue to be the fastest growing retailers, up by 15.1% and 10.1% respectively. Both are rewarded with new record high market shares: 5.4% for Aldi and 3.8% for Lidl. While such growth is the envy of the industry it is slower than in recent months, suggesting the discounter momentum is starting to slow a little."

Sales at Morrisons declined by 1.1% on a year ago, while at Tesco they fell back by 1.0%, taking market share to 28.4% – a decline of 0.4 percentage points compared to a year ago. Apart from the discounters only Waitrose has seen an increase in sales, up 1.5%. The Co-operative saw sales fall by 1.0% but did slightly increase footfall, as the business tries to exit larger format supermarkets to concentrate on its convenience business.

Kantar Worldpanel has launched a new data visualisation tool that allows you to view and analyse Grocery Market Share data online. The latest sales share figures for all of the major grocers can be viewed and compared with historical figures here and all graphics within the Kantar Worldpanel dataviz are available to embed in your site. (Optimal viewing in recent versions of Internet Explorer or Chrome)