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EDWARD GARNER, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH, TNS WORLDPANEL, comments: 13th November 2007: The latest TNS Worldpanel grocery market share figures, published today for the 12 weeks ending 4th November 2007, once again show sales through grocers growing at an annual rate of 5%, as the market shrugs off the credit crunch gloom and the effect of the price discounting seen in August. For the Top 4 life remains as furiously competitive as ever. Whilst Tesco has still grown share over the last year from 31.1% to 31.5%, this growth of 0.4 share points has been gained in the teeth of strong competition from the next three – a year ago the equivalent Tesco share increase was 1.1 share points. Whilst Morrisons has seen its share shaved from 11.2% a year ago to 11.1% now, this hides the fact that we may be starting to see a turnaround in Morrisons’ fortunes, based on the most recent trends: 12 w/e 9th September 2007 10.8%
12 w/e 7th October 2007 10.9%
12 w/e 4th November 2007 11.1% Any early evidence of Morrisons recent repositioning will be eagerly sought. Once again there is a strong showing from Waitrose with the share at record levels and history tells us this is likely to increase as Christmas approaches. The Iceland recovery shows no sign of running out of steam with 9% year-on-year growth but, interestingly, this growth is being driven by Chilled and Ambient sectors rather than Frozen. Naturally, these levels of competition are making life tough for other fascias with pressure on the share performance of Somerfield, Co-ops and Independents.
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