Morrisons was the only one of the big four retailers to see an increase in sales for the 12 weeks to 24 May 2015, according to the latest grocery market share data from Kantar Worldpanel.
The 0.1% rise is the first increase in sales for the supermarket since December 2013, although its market share remained unchanged at 10.9%.
Sales growth continued at the discounters as Lidl saw a growth of 8.8% reaching a new record high market share of 3.9%, up from 3.6% last year. Aldi also grew sales by 15.7%, taking share to 5.4% of the market.
Sainsbury’s held its share at 16.5% despite sales falling by 0.3%. Tesco sales decreased by 1.3% and market share fell by 0.4 percentage points to 28.6%. While Asda dropped by 2.4%.
As a result of sales growth of 1.6% Waitrose increased its market share to 5.2% while Iceland also returned to growth for the first time in a year, increasing sales by 1.9%.
“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 CEO 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,” said Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel
“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.”
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