Early Easter boosts supermarket sales with fastest growth in 12 months
New figures on the grocery market have revealed that an early Easter helped supermarket sales to edge up 1.1% in the 12 weeks ending 27 March to mark the fastest growth in 12 months.
The latest grocery share figures from Kantar Worldpanel show that Sainsbury’s continued to lead the big four supermarkets with a sales increase of 1.2% despite it scaling back multi-buy promotions. This meant its share of the market was 16.4%.
For the fourth month in a row, Tesco’s decline lessened with sales now down by only 0.2% year-on-year. Partly hindered by previously announced store closures, Tesco’s market share fell by 0.3 percentage points to 28.1%.
Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel, said: “An early Easter gave the market a sales boost of £152 million compared to last year, adding 0.6% to the overall growth rate.”
He added: “A small increase in shopper numbers suggests Tesco could return to growth in the next few months; welcome news after 12 months in decline.”
Also feeling the impact of operating fewer shops, Morrisons saw its sales fall by 2.4%, an improvement on last month, while its market share decreased by 0.4 percentage points to 10.5%.
Elsewhere, Lidl retained its place as the fastest growing supermarket, increasing sales by 17.7% to capture 4.4% of the market, while Aldi grew sales by 14.4% to reach a new record high market share of 6%.
Ronny Gottschlich, Lidl UK chief executive, said: “Once again we have experienced one of our most successful trading periods. With almost 40 million customer transactions in the four weeks leading up to Easter, Lidl has become the supermarket of choice both for the regular shop and the most important meals of the year for an increasing number of British consumers.”
The Co-operative saw sales increase by 3.9%, its fastest growth since the Somerfield acquisition in 2011, and increased its market share by 0.1 percentage point to 6.1%.
Meanwhile, Waitrose grew its sales by 1.7% to leave its market share at 5.1% and Asda’s sales edged down 3.9% to give it a market share of 16.2%.
