The latest grocery market share figures from Kantar Worldpanel (formerly TNS Worldpanel), published today for the 12 weeks ending 21 February 2010, show that the battle between Tesco and Asda is hotting up.
As anticipated, Tesco is at the forefront of the fight for the shopper’s pound and has reaped the rewards of its national Clubcard campaign and double points scheme with a share increase from 30.1% to 30.4%.
Unsurprisingly this has put the pressure on Asda which records a 0.2% drop in market share this month.
Ed Garner, Communications Director at Kantar Worldpanel, explains:
“The post-Christmas period is traditionally characterised by price wars but this year we’re seeing a step-up in marketing activities such as loyalty schemes and coupons to attract consumers’ share of wallet. Tesco has undoubtedly turned up the heat for Asda this month but the battle is by no means over. Asda has reacted strongly with a major coupon scheme of its own and we expect to see the impact of this latest consumer onslaught in next month’s figures.”
Despite strong competition from Tesco and Asda, Sainsbury’s continues to perform ahead of the market and has grown share for the twelfth successive period in this series of reports. Morrisons has also posted another strong performance this month boosted by its store acquisition on the back of the Co-operative’s assimilation of Somerfield.
Following its pre-Christmas £200m package of price cuts and promotions to support the takeover, the Co-operative has recorded the strongest growth this period with a year-on-year growth of 16.3%.
This growth is just ahead of another sparkling performance from Waitrose which has posted a 15.5% year-on-year growth this month and lifted its market share to an all-time record of 4.3%.
Conversely, the Discounters continue to languish well behind the market with both Lidl and Aldi experiencing loss of market share. Their reversal of fortune, with market share back to a pre-recession level, can partly be attributed to increased price competition from the major retailers.
In particular, Asda’s low-cost offering has been highly publicised in recent months as it woos back the value-hungry who migrated to the Discounters when the recession hit. Additionally the weakness of sterling continues to threaten some of the pricing in the German-based retailers and consumers are once again starting to shop there more selectively.
An update on inflation
Grocery price inflation has slightly decreased since last month and the figure for the 12 week ending period 21 February 2010 is 2.4%*. This confirms that we are currently in a low-inflation environment which could restrict the ability of the market to generate cash growth.
*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. It is a ‘pure’ inflation measure in that shopping behaviour is held constant between the two comparison periods – shoppers are likely to achieve a lower personal inflation rate if they trade down or seek out more offers.
Total Till Roll
Great Britain Consumer Spend
To view the video commentary from Ed Garner or to get further information please visit www.kantarworldpanel.com and select ‘Insights’.
On 25 January 2010 TNS Worldpanel rebranded as Kantar Worldpanel.
This move follows TNS’ acquisition by WPP in 2008. Kantar is WPP’s global provider of market insights so bringing Worldpanel into the Kantar fold is a natural step forward. Kantar Worldpanel remains the UK’s leading provider of continuous consumer panel data and there will be with no change to Worldpanel’s product, service, employees or clients as a result of the rebrand.
The rebranding aims to give Worldpanel a fresh image that fits with the wider Kantar group, but the industry-leading panel sizes and methodologies we use will remain exactly as in the past, as will the quality of the insights that we provide.
There will be no change to the methodology used to produce the monthly Supermarket Share data and you will be able to seamlessly compare TNS Worldpanel data with Kantar Worldpanel data to provide robust, trended year-on-year figures.
For all publicly-quoted Worldpanel data, users of our research (including media) must ensure that data is now sourced Kantar Worldpanel. TNS Worldpanel will not exist as a corporate entity and Worldpanel data sourced as TNS will be wrongly labelled. These findings are based on Kantar Worldpanel data for the 12 weeks to 21 February 2010. Kantar Worldpanel monitors the household grocery purchasing habits of 25,000 demographically representative households in Great Britain.
All data discussed in the above announcement is based on the value of items being bought by these consumers, Kantar will only support data that is published in the context we have presented it and our own interpretation of these findings.
We cannot be held responsible for any other interpretation of these findings.
About Kantar:
The Kantar Group is one of the world's largest research, insight and consultancy networks. By uniting the diverse talents of more than 20 specialist companies – including the recently-acquired TNS – the group aims to become the pre-eminent provider of compelling and actionable insights for the global business community.
Its 26,500 employees work across 80 countries and across the whole spectrum of research and consultancy disciplines, enabling the group to offer clients business insights at each and every point of the consumer cycle.
The group’s services are employed by over half of the Fortune Top 500 companies. The Kantar Group is a wholly-owned subsidiary of WPP Group plc.
For further information, please visit www.kantar.com
2nd March 2010
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