E. Leclerc remains the leader in the French grocery market, holding a 21.6% market share in the final four week period of the year (P13), according to the latest market data from Kantar Worldpanel France.
According to Kantar Worldpanel, the retailer increased its communication efforts in the run up to Christmas, which led an extra 290,000 shoppers to pass through its doors.
Its closest rival, Carrefour, holds 19.9%, which is the biggest gap between the top two since P09 this year.
Carrefour will take solace in the fact that its hypermarkets performed slightly better in the period, at 10.1% market share, up from 9.5% in the preceding period.
In third place, Intermarché holds 14.5% share, while Groupe Casino (10.9%), Auchan (10.5%) and Système U (10.5%) are all in close competition for fourth.
Lidl posted the strongest growth in the period (+0.5%) to sit on 5.7% market share, with some 400,000 new customers visiting the discounter, according to Kantar Worldpanel. Fellow discounter Aldi has also shown growth (+0.2%), posting a market share of 2.5% for the period.
The P13 period covers the four weeks from 26 November to 23 December, a period that saw 'yellow vest' protests disrupt certain retail channels – hypermarkets saw sales drop 0.8% in the four weeks.
Analyst Comment
Commenting on the figures, Bruno Monteyne of Bernstein Research said that the period was a "weak" one for Carrefour, "conceding -65bps of market share versus a trailing 12 month average of -17bps. Hypers were largely to blame, losing -42bps of share and contributing to about half of the channel's losses. Supers lost -15bps, Convenience -17bps and Online implicitly gained +7bps.
"Whilst market share trends looked encouraging until this summer, the trend over the last three periods is bad and getting worse again. This does not bode well for the Carrefour turn-around thesis in France. Online is still contributing well to growth but the core business seems to remain weak on this Kantar data."
On market leader E. Leclerc, Monteyne added that momentum is gaining at the retailer, "After many successive periods of market share losses in 2018, Leclerc have ended the year on the front foot. They gained ~10bps of share in P11 and P12, and this period was especially strong at +49bps. Leclerc is making a strong comeback as Carrefour and Casino drop off."
© 2019 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
