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December 9th 2008 Plus an update on grocery price inflation Ed Garner, Director of Research, TNS Worldpanel, comments: The latest TNS Worldpanel grocery market share figures, published today for the 12 weeks ending 30th November 2008 continue to show the impact of the consumer downturn on the grocery business. Total Grocers are showing 6.2% growth which is less than the pure inflation measure for the sector as shoppers seek to continue trading down, both in terms of outlets and in terms of product mix within outlets. At least the sector is continuing to show positive year-on-year growth unlike the well-documented tribulations in other retailing sectors – the Non-Grocer Till Roll stands at -4.6% for this period. For the first time in recent years Waitrose slips into negative territory with -0.7% year-on-year growth resulting in a share dip from 3.8% to 3.6% for the 12 weeks ending 30th November. Given this pressure on premium retailers, Sainsbury’s must be encouraged to see that their growth rate is matching the market meaning that their share of 16.0% is unchanged year-on-year. Tesco suffers a share drop from 31.5% to 30.9% with a growth rate standing at 4.3% - lagging the market rate of 6.2%. Rather than being a serious volume decline of the business, this represents “self-imposed deflation” with their introduction of Discount Brands to increase their price-competitiveness. Asda and Morrisons continue to benefit from their value-for-money reputations in the current economic environment with strong growth of 7.8% and 10.3% respectively. Iceland, Lidl and Aldi continue to grow on the back of their value positioning and, in the case of Aldi, to set new records of share (3.1%) and year-on-year growth (25.4%). The next data issue will cover the Christmas trading period and it will be a critical test of consumer confidence to see whether the traditional share uplifts for Sainsbury and Waitrose are maintained. An update on inflation
As predicted last period, grocery price inflation has continued to fall back and the figure for the 12 week-ending period 30th November 2008 has dropped to 8.5% from 8.9% last time. This figure is based on over 75,000 identical products compared year-on-year in the proportions purchased by British shoppers and therefore represents the most authoritative figure currently available.
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