New grocery market figures show a return to growth for Morrisons
New figures on the grocery market show continued slow growth in the supermarket sector with sales increasing by just 0.2% compared to a year ago.
The latest grocery share figures from Kantar Worldpanel covering the 12 weeks ending 24 May, reveal that Morrisons was the only one of the big four retailers to see increased sales in the period although its market share remained unchanged at 10.9%.
Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel, said: “Morrisons has returned to growth for the first time since December 2013 with a marginal sales increase of 0.1% – a welcome boost for new chief executive David Potts. A committed core of loyal Morrisons consumers is responding positively to recent initiatives and business has been boosted by online sales. Morrisons’ performance is an improvement on what was a difficult May 2014, so this is only the first step in any future recovery.”
Sainsbury’s held its share at 16.5%, despite sales falling by 0.3%, and Tesco sales decreased by 1.3% with its market share falling by 0.4 percentage points to 28.6%.
Meanwhile, Asda saw its sales drop by 2.4% with its market share standing at 16.6%.
McKevitt added: “All of the major supermarkets are finding growth difficult as prices have been declining since September 2014. Yet while like-for-like groceries are 1.9% cheaper than this time last year this is not as steep a fall as last month, when prices were down by 2.1%. This means that if current trends continue, prices will once again start rising by the end of the year.”
Buoyed by sales growth of 8.8% Lidl reached a new record high market share of 3.9%, up from 3.6% last year. Aldi grew its sales by 15.7%, taking its share to 5.4% of the market.
As a result of sales growth of 1.6%, Waitrose increased market share to 5.2%.
Meanwhile, Iceland returned to growth for the first time in a year in the period, increasing its sales by 1.9%. Its market share was 2.1%.
