Dunnes sees sales boost but Tesco remains on top

The latest supermarket figures from Kantar Worldpanel Ireland show growth in sales of 1.4% across the grocery market.

The latest supermarket share figures from Kantar Worldpanel in Ireland, published today for the 12 weeks ending 16 August, show a year-on-year growth in sales of 1.4% across the Irish grocery market. Linked to an upswing in the level of price inflation – which now stands at 1.3% compared to 0.7% last month – this is the best performance since March this year. Dunnes posted the strongest sales, growing well ahead of the market with an increase of 8.2% in the past 12 weeks. This was closely followed by Lidl, who grew sales by 7.7%.

David Berry, director at Kantar Worldpanel, explains: “Dunnes’ success is in large part thanks to the continuation of its ‘Shop and Save’ campaign. Although fewer people have shopped with the retailer this period, these customers have been encouraged to spend more, with the average shop now costing €34.50 – an increase of more than €5.”

Lidl has maintained its strong performance, boosting its share of the market by more than half a percentage point to 9.1%. Sales growth of 7.7% has been driven by an increased number of shoppers returning to the store more frequently and spending larger amounts on each occasion. Lidl is the only retailer to drive improvement in all three of these areas in the past quarter.

David Berry continues: “We’ve seen Tesco’s performance improve in recent months, and the past 12 weeks are no exception – sales decline now stands at just -1.0%. As its performance continues to improve, Tesco retains the number one position in the market with 24.8% share, despite an ongoing tussle with SuperValu for the top spot. An increase in customer numbers, with more than 20,000 new shoppers recruited this year, has played a vital part in the supermarket’s recovery.”

SuperValu has retained second place, though close competition continues as the second largest retailer remains just 0.3 percentage points behind Tesco, with 24.5% of the market. Aldi has seen sales grow by 3.8%, lifting its share of the market to 8.7%

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)