SuperValu New Number One Supermarket in Ireland

Change at the top as SuperValu becomes Ireland’s largest grocery retailer.

The latest supermarket share figures from Kantar Worldpanel in Ireland, published today for the 12 weeks ending 29 March, show a change at the top with SuperValu becoming Ireland’s largest grocery retailer.

David Berry, Director at Kantar Worldpanel, explains: “One of the key rules in driving sales growth is that you need to broaden your appeal to attract new consumers to your brand. SuperValu has consistently achieved this with eighteen consecutive periods of footfall growth increasing its shopper numbers by 63,000. Undoubtedly one of the key milestones in helping SuperValu move to the top of the pile was the acquisition of the Superquinn business in July 2011. Rebranding the 24 Superquinn stores under the SuperValu banner in February 2014 led to an immediate jump in market share from 20% to 25.1%. More importantly, SuperValu’s performance within Dublin improved dramatically as its market share more than doubled from 9.5% to 22.2% today.”

Tesco’s story is one of mixed performance. Sales are down year on year and as a result market share has dipped from 25.9% to 24.7%. While Tesco will be disappointed to have lost its number one position, there are some positive signs for the retailer. It has not lost shoppers since this time last year and its customers are making the same number of shopping trips with increased average basket sizes – the most positive results for these metrics in more than two years. This points to an interesting battle over the coming months as SuperValu looks to remain in the top spot while Tesco aims to regain its advantage.

Dunnes has continued to enjoy healthy growth, with a 4.9% sales increase improving its market share to 22.7%. This has been fuelled by larger baskets, with two additional items included in each average trip, and can be linked to the retailer’s ‘Shop and Save’ voucher campaign which incentivised shoppers to spend more on each visit. The performance of both Aldi and Lidl has remained impressive with sales growth of 11.1% and 9.7% respectively. Aldi has successfully recruited new shoppers to its stores, while Lidl shoppers are returning to the retailer more often.

For more Grocery Market Share data check out our new interactive DataViz platform here.