According to the latest Kantar Worldpanel market share figures for the 12 weeks to 1 January, UK supermarkets are growing at the fastest rate since June 2014.
Additional consumer spend of £480 million at the tills during Christmas has driven sales up by 1.8% for the period.
“With Christmas Eve falling on a Saturday and giving shoppers more time to buy their final festive trimmings, the single busiest shopping day of the year was Friday 23 December, with over half the population braving a grocery store,” says Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel.
“The typical household spend for December reached £365 this year – £52 more than the average month.”
Sales of premium own-brand products were particularly strong this year, with top-tier lines of “own label fresh and smoked fish, cooked meats such as ham, and wine” seeing sales growth, Kantar Worldpanel noted.
In terms of supermarket share, Tesco still leads the market, with a market share of 28.2%, with sales 1.3% up on the sale period last year.
Sainsburys, which holds 16.7% share (-0.1%) and Asda, on 15.5% share (-2.4%) both saw declines, however Morrisons posted sales growth of 1.2% for the period.
The biggest growth for the period was seen at Lidl, which rose by 7.5% to stand on 4.4% share; and Iceland, which saw growth of 9.6% to stand on 2.3% share.
© 2017 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. To subscribe to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine, click here.
