Morrisons and Asda lose ground to Tesco as supermarket wars rage on
TESCO has started to push ahead against rivals including Yorkshire-based supermarkets Asda and Morrisons, according to the latest grocery share figures from Kantar Worldpanel.
Tesco was one of the big winners of the UK supermarkets for the 12 weeks ending 1 March 2015.
Despite decreasing their share of the market from 28.8% to 28.7%, they increased customer spend by 1.1% whilst the other Big Four supermarkets; Morrisons, Asda and Sainsbury’s all lost out.
Walmart-owned Asda’s customers spent less £4.48bn in the 12 weeks to March 1, 2015 compared to £4.57bn in the same period last year.
Their market share dropped a full 2.1%, making them one of the biggest losers, along with The Co-Operative, from Kantar Worldpanel’s figures.
Morrisons fared slightly better for the same 12 weeks, with only a 0.1% drop in market share and a slight decrease in customer spending from £2.90bn to £2.89bn.
Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel, said: “All of the major supermarkets are cutting prices to win shoppers, especially within everyday staples such as eggs, vegetables and milk. Retailers are focusing their efforts on simple price cuts rather than complicated ‘multibuy’ deals.
“Among the big four supermarkets Tesco has been the standout retailer. It has posted its strongest performance in 18 months with sales up 1.1% compared with a difficult 2014.
“This resurgence has impacted Asda which competes for many of the same shoppers as Tesco. Asda’s sales are down by 2.1%, taking its market share to 17.0%.
“Morrisons and Sainsbury’s both grew behind the market average with sales falling by 0.4% and 0.5% respectively.”
Aldi has continued to grow well ahead of the market with sales up 19.3% compared with a year ago.
Fellow German supermarket Lidl also performed well, with growth of 13.6% increasing share to 3.5%.
Sales at Waitrose increased by 4.9% in the latest period and the grocer’s market share has remained at its highest level with 5.2%, up 0.2 percentage points.
