High street retailers increase share of entertainment market
New figures on the entertainment market have shown that high street retailers such as HMV and GAME are beginning to steal back market share from the supermarkets.
Latest data from Kantar Worldpanel for the 12 weeks to 6 July reveals that HMV increased its market share from 13.6% to 14.7% from the previous quarter while GAME boosted its share by 1.1% year-on-year to 7.1%.
Fiona Keenan, strategic insight director at Kantar Worldpanel, said: “HMV appears to be making a comeback on the high street following a strong performance over the past quarter. Performing strongly in video and music, it is winning some shoppers back from the grocers as well as increasing spend from its current shoppers by £3 over the past 12 weeks alone.”
Keenan added: “GAME has performed particularly well thanks to Gen 4 games, especially the industry’s highest value release, Watchdogs, taking over a quarter of all sales to date.”
Kantar’s figures show that Amazon remains the entertainment market leader with a 21.8% share as it capitalises on the sustained success of the games market.
Despite not being one of the main entertainment retailers, Argos increased its share of the entertainment market by 0.8% year-on-year in the 12 week period to take it to 2.6%.
Kantar said the retailer’s success was largely linked to its performance within the games category. Keenan said: “Argos had a strong Christmas in games, which was expected given its strength in gifting. It has managed to maintain its strong performance throughout the first half of this year and is now the fourth biggest gaming retailer with 9.1% share, behind GAME, Amazon and Tesco. The launch of Argos’ new digital stores concept in London this week is also likely to help drive its performance in the right direction.”
While the grocers accounted for some 50% of video disc sales, Kantar found that their performance for the overall market has suffered recently. Across the big four supermarkets – Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons – almost one million fewer shoppers bought entertainment products over the past 12 weeks.
