The gilets jaunes (yellow-vests) protests in France impacted French retailer performance in the latest four-week period, according to Kantar Worldpanel, with the FMCG sector growing by 0.7% – around half the 52-week growth rate of 1.3%.
The hypermarket sector saw a 62-basis-point decline in the P12 period (against a full-year average decline of 34 basis points), however, the rest of the sector held up relatively well, with supermarkets up four basis points, convenience seeing a two-basis-point decline, discounters up 21 basis points, and online up 39 basis points.
The P12 period runs from 29 October to 25 November.
Market Leaders
In terms of retailer performance, E. Leclerc retains its market leadership position, with 21.3% market share (+0.1% year on year), and has increased its lead over closest rival Carrefour, which sits on 20.0% market share (-0.5%).
Intermarché sits in third place, on 14.8% market share (+0.4%), with Groupe Casino's collected banners accounting for 11.2% share (-0.2%). Indeed, on a case-by-case basis, all Casino's banners were flat, with Franprix (-0.1%) and Leader Price (-0.2%) seeing marginal declines.
Auchan holds 10.3% market share (-0.4%), with Système U on 10.6% (+0.2%) and Delhaize on 3.2% (0.0%).
Both discounters saw growth, with Lidl now on 5.9% market share (+0.3%) and Aldi on 2.4% share (+0.1%).
'Material Slowdown'
Commenting on the findings, Bruno Monteyne of Bernstein Research noted that Carrefour's performance was a 'material slowdown from [the] previous period (12-month average of -17bps). It also compounds on top of a weak period last year (at -57bps last year). The -48bps comprised of: -38bps in Hypers, -9bps in Supers, -12bps in Convenience, and +11bps in Online.
'The channel mix of having more hypermarkets (blocked by yellow-vest protests) does not seem to explain this weakness. Leclerc, which is almost entirely hypermarket based, maintained seven bps of market share growth, in line with last period,' Monteyne also noted.
Monteyne added that the online market share gain 'is solid, but is only 19% of the overall growth in online groceries. In other words, there are limited signs of catching up in this period for grocery e-commerce.'
© 2018 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.
