Grocery growth flatlines and Big Four struggle to hold steady

GROCERY growth has flatlined, but the Big Four are just about managing to hold steady according to Kantar Worldpanel.

Although sales have dipped among the Big Four once again, with Tesco seeing the smallest drop, with a 1.0% decline, the supermarkets are not haemorrhaging customers.

Walmart-owned Asda’s low price reputation remains under threat from Aldi and Lidl’s growth. For the 12 weeks to 22 May, sales fell 5.1% on last year giving it a 15.8% share of the market, compared to 17.5% two years ago and its fortunes continue to decline.

Last month it announced that sales had fallen for the seventh consecutive quarter.

Like-for-like sales were down 5.7% for the first quarter, excluding fuel.

Walmart pointed to “significant, structural shifts in the market driven by growth in hard discounters and intense price competition, [which has] led to continued deflation in food that has now lasted for 20 consecutive months”

It has announced the sale of its photo division to Photo-Me at the end of April as it attempts to slim down its operations.

Morrisons is still feeling the impact of having less store space than last year, with a market share of 10.7% and Sainsbury’s dipped 1.2% due to decline in multipack deals which are having a short-term impact.

Edward Garner, director at Kantar Worldpanel, said: “While the big four are struggling to keep their market share what’s clear is that consumers aren’t flocking away from their stores – their combined shopper numbers have dropped only 0.2% in the latest 12 weeks.

“In fact, 94% of Aldi and Lidl shoppers still visit at least one of the four major retailers every four weeks. However, consumers’ spend is increasingly being shared with other growing outlets which also include Waitrose, the Co-operative and Iceland.”