Insight: Lidl and Aldi achieve record high shares of the grocery market
Fresh figures on the grocery market show that supermarket sales increased in value by 1.4% year-on-year in the 12 weeks to 26 March as Lidl and Aldi achieved record market shares.
The figures from Kantar Worldpanel reveal that Lidl and Aldi now account collectively for 11.7% of the market. Lidl was the fastest growing retailer following sales growth of 15% which increased its market share to 4.9%. Meanwhile, Aldi upped its sales by 14.3% to take its share to 6.8%.
Slowing growth rates due to this year’s late Easter meant that Morrisons was the only one of the big four supermarkets to increase its sales over the period with a rise of 0.3% although its market share dipped by 0.1 percentage points to 10.4%.
Sales at Tesco were down 0.4% which meant its market share dropped by 0.5 percentage points to 27.6%. Asda’s sales fell by 1.8% while sales at Sainsbury’s declined by 0.7% to leave their respective market shares at 15.7% and 16.1%.
Meanwhile, sales at Waitrose edged up by 0.3% which meant its market share was 5.1% in the period.
Looking at what shoppers are buying, Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel, said: “Despite rising prices, we’ve seen shoppers’ minds turn to healthy eating after the excess of the festive period and before the temptation of Easter.
“Greater demand for gluten or dairy-free products, particularly from younger shoppers, has boosted the ‘free from’ category by 36% year-on-year. In fact, 54% of the population purchased a ‘free from’ product during the past three months – that’s 3.3 million more people than last year.”
