Market leader E. Leclerc posted the strongest market share gain in the French supermarket sector in the period from 19 April to 16 May, according to the latest Kantar data, with the group seeing its share rise by 1.3 percentage points to 22.8%.
The data for the so-called 'P5' period also showed Carrefour making gains – the retailer's market share was up 0.5 percentage points, with its performance driven by both its hypermarkets and online services, Kantar said. An additional 1.16 million shoppers visited Carrefour in the period.
Discounter Lidl, which also saw a 0.5 percentage point increase in market share, recruited an additional 1.5 million customers, and now stands on a market share of 7.0%.
Other retailers to see post gains included Aldi, which saw its market share rise 0.2 percentage points to 2.7%, thanks to the ongoing transformation of former Leader Price stores, and L. Delhaize Group, which gained 0.2 percentage points to sit on 3.0% share, with a 'marked increase' at its Cora banner.
Reduced Spend
According to Kantar's findings, French consumers reduced their spending by 3.5% in P5 2021, compared to the corresponding period last year; this, however, is unsurprising given the very strong growth in grocery sales at this time last year (+13%), said Kantar.
An interesting fact to note is that consumers are now visiting stores more regularly, conducting 7.1 acts of purchase on average per household, roughly on a par with the numbers seen in P5 2019.
Hypermarkets are proving to be the main beneficiaries of the return to normal shopping behaviour, gaining 3.3 percentage points to account for 40.5% of overall spend. At the same time, the online channel saw a 0.7 percentage point decline, but still retained a significantly higher level than two years ago (8.9% in P5 2021 compared to 6.3% in P5 2019).
Market leader E. Leclerc previously posted a market share of 22.1% in the P4 period.
© 2021 European Supermarket Magazine. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. For more Retail news, click here. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
