The 'Drive' format continues to gain pace in France, with several of the country's biggest retail players seeing double digit sales growth through the channel last year, according to estimated figures from French retail consultancy Olivier Dauvers.
E. Leclerc is the runaway leader, with sales of €2.85 billion last year, and an increase in sales of 10% year-on-year.
Olivier Dauvers estimates that Leclerc's market share in the Drive format is currently 48%, putting it well ahead of the competition.
Main Rivals
The second biggest retailer using the Drive channel is Auchan, which posted sales of €730 million last year, an increase of 2.8%, with the retailer now holding 12% of the total Drive market.
It is followed by Système U's CoursesU.com service, which posted €534 million worth of sales using the channel last year, an increase of 15% year-on-year. Système U holds 9% of the market, the study found.
Carrefour places fourth with €530 million worth of sales, with the retailer posting the highest level of growth (+20%) of all the retailers included in the study. As with Système U, Carrefour's share of the Drive market now stands at 9%.
Also investing heavily in the format is Intermarché, which has seen an 18% increase in Drive sales year-on-year, to stand on €483 million worth of sales.
However, Chronodrive, which was the pioneer of the 'Drive' format in the French marketplace, saw its sales fall by 0.9% last year, to €454 million.
According to Olivier Dauvers, Chronodrive has adopted a less aggressive pricing strategy than its rivals, while the likes of Système U, Carrefour and Intermarché have accelerated theirs.
New Openings
Intermarché led the way in terms of new 'Drive' openings last year, with 85 new sites coming on stream, while Carrefour opened 67 and Système U unveiled 52.
Total sales in the Drive format last year were €5.9 billion, according to Olivier Dauvers, up from €5.4 billion in 2016 and €4.9 billion in 2015.
According to French retail trade publication LSA, a total of 18 Drive outlets were opened in France in January of this year, which is higher than in the same month last year (17 openings), but down on January 2016, when 19 outlets were opened, and less than half that of January 2015, when 37 outlets were opened.
Carrefour and Intermarché were the most active retailers in terms of new 'Drive' outlets in January, with six new openings each.
Carrefour Strategy
New Carrefour chief executive Alexandre Bompard has outlined big plans for the 'Drive' format in France, saying at the launch of the retailer's new 'Transformation Plan' in January that the retailer has heretofore "not managed to invest as much in it to offer the same quality of service as our competitors."
He added that Carrefour intends to open as many as 170 new Drive outlets in France in 2018.
"We are now building an automated system for the preparation of orders, and that will enable us to improve our productivity and the quality of services," Bompard said. "Then, as early as 2019, more than half of our stores will be Click and Collect points.
"So, home delivery, Drive, Click and Collect, connected to our entire network, will provide us with unique capacity to serve our customers, especially in large cities."
© 2018 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
