Grocery market fails to feel impact of Brexit on prices or volume sales
New figures on the grocery market show slow growth for the supermarket sector in the 12 weeks to 17 July. The figures from Kantar Worldpanel reveal that sales were up 0.1% compared to the corresponding period last year.
Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel, said: “The EU referendum result has had no immediate impact on the prices retailers are charging or the sales volumes consumers are buying over the past 12 weeks. The nation’s average shopping basket is 1.4% cheaper than a year ago, exactly the same level of deflation as reported last month, and it remains to be seen if the Brexit vote will bring about any price rises this year.”
Among the individual retailers, sales at Tesco fell by 0.7% although its market share declines are now slowing, down by 0.2% percentage points to 28.3% of the market. This was Tesco’s slowest rate of share loss since March 2014 and has been helped by an improved performance from its larger stores.
At Sainsbury’s sales fell by 1.1%, taking its market share down by 0.2 percentage points to 16.3%.
McKevitt said: “Sainsbury’s has followed through on its promise to remove multibuy offers from its shelves in favour of everyday low prices and simple price cuts and less than 1% of its sales now require shoppers to pick up more than one item to feel the benefit of the promotion.”
Newly installed Asda chief executive Sean Clarke saw sales at the supermarket fall by 5.6%, with share declining to 15.5%.
McKevitt added: “Asda is alone among the big four retailers in increasing the proportion of sales made on promotion compared with last year. However, its absolute level of sales sold on a deal remains behind its large competitors, where promotions account for 45.2% of sales.”
Morrisons’ sales fell by 1.8% – to mark its best results since January this year. These figures still reflect its wave of store disposals in 2015 and their impact on performance should start to lessen in the next few months. While Morrisons’ overall market share fell by 0.2 percentage points to 10.7%, its premium own-label lines showed strong growth of 3.8% – the best premium private-label performance among the big four supermarkets.
Growth continued at Iceland where sales were up 2.8% year-on-year. Co-op increased its sales by 2.1% while Waitrose sales grew by 1.6%. All three retailers gained market share for the third consecutive period, moving up to 2.1%, 6.4% and 5.1% respectively.
Meanwhile, Lidl reached a new market share high of 4.5% thanks to a sales increase of 12.5% while Aldi increased its market share to a record 6.2% following a sales increase of 11%.
