Market leader E.Leclerc and Lidl were the best performing grocers in the first four weeks of the new year, according to the latest market share data from Kantar.
E.Leclerc saw a 0.8 percentage point increase in the period from 30 December to 26 January, the data showed, to sit on 21.6% market share.
Improved Loyalty
This was driven by improvements in loyalty levels and an increase in the number of shoppers passing through its doors, Kantar said.
In addition, E.Leclerc has increased investment in advertising and promotional activity over the past few months, which are now reaping dividends.
Discounter Lidl, meanwhile, saw a 0.5 percentage point gain to sit on 6.5% market share for the four week period. Substantial media investment has led to growth in new customer levels at the discounter, Kantar said.
Also posting a positive performance in the period was Les Mousquetaires, which operates the Intermarché chain, which was up 0.2 percentage points to 15.1% market share, as well as Système U, which consolidated fourth place in the French market with a 0.1 percentage point gain to sit on 10.6%.
Carrefour Stagnant
According to the Kantar data, Carrefour holds a 20.1% share of the market in the four-week period, which is down on the 20.3% it held for the same period last year.
Groupe Casino, meanwhile, is on 10.1% market share, having sold off a sizeable number of stores last year. In the corresponding period at the start of 2019, Casino held 10.9% of the market.
Consumer Spend
Consumer spend in the grocery channel was up 3.7% in the P01 2020 period, according to Kantar, which was well ahead of the preceding quarter (P13 2019), in which spend was down 2.8%.
This level of spend was more marked in the online channel, which saw a 0.3 percentage point gain in the four week period.
Online purchases account for approximately 7% of the market in France, Kantar said, with around a fifth (21%) of French households spending 32% of their grocery spend via online channels in the past 12 weeks.
Analyst Comment
Commenting on the findings, Bruno Monteyne of Bernstein Research said, "In terms of channel shift, we saw Hypers flat in P1. Across the last 2 periods, Hypers are down -47bps, which is worse than the previous 13-periods of -24 bps. Again over the last two periods, Supers were down -2bps (-9 bps this period), slightly better than the TTM figure of -10 bps.
"Discounters were up +8 bps (-1bp this period vs. TTM +14 bps), Convenience -1 bps (-19bps this period vs. TTM -6bps) and Online +42 bps (+28bps this period vs. TTM +27 bps); as before, we see a shift away from legacy formats and into Online and Discounters."
© 2020 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.
