Supermarket sales boosted by World Cup and heatwave
New figures on the grocery market have shown that the World Cup and continuing heatwave have helped supermarket sales to grow at their fastest rate this year with a rise of 3.6%.
According to Kantar Worldpanel’s latest grocery market share figures for the 12 weeks to 15 July, sales of firelighters and fresh burgers surged by 47% and 30% respectively as shoppers enjoyed barbecues. Meanwhile sun cream sales were up 38%.
Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel, said: “England may not have won the World Cup – but its journey to the semi-finals not only helped to kickstart the summer, but supermarket sales to boot.
“Over the past month, football-frenzied customers visited supermarkets an extra 13 million times as they hurried to stock up on World Cup-viewing essentials, with alcohol in particular the stand-out winner. Christmas and Easter aside, the week that the England football team played both Colombia and Sweden saw more spent on alcohol than ever before – a colossal £287 million.”
Looking at individual supermarkets, Kantar’s figures reveal that the Co-op grew its sales by 6.4% to mark its highest recorded increase since October 2011, as people shopped more locally to enable them to make the most of the sunshine. Kantar said shoppers returned to Co-op stores on average a record 10.1 times in the last month
Meanwhile Asda increased its sales by 3.7% to mark its strongest growth in more than five years. The uplift made it the best performing big four supermarket for the first time since December 2014. McKevitt explained: “Buoyed by a sales increase of 9% to its core, standard own-label lines – which make up 40% of its sales – Asda held market share steady at 15.1%. The retailer also encouraged an additional 230,000 shoppers through its doors over the past 12 weeks.“
While Morrisons posted strong growth of 2.9% and achieved a market share of 10.5%, Sainsbury’s market share declined by 0.4 percentage points to 15.6%, despite experiencing sales growth of 0.8%.
During the period Tesco’s convenience Express stores proved popular with shoppers, contributing to Tesco’s overall growth of 2.3%. However, its market share dropped by 0.3 percentage points to 27.6%.
Boosted by its title as the official supermarket of the England football team, Lidl saw its sales increase by 9.7%. The discounter also grew its market share by 0.3 percentage points to 5.4% compared to this time last year. Meanwhile Aldi returned to double-digit growth with sales rising by 10.9% to help it reach a market-share high of 7.5%.
Elsewhere, sales at Iceland rose by 4.5% as the retailer continued to grow outside its core frozen lines. This helped it to secure a 2.1% market share.
Although Waitrose increased its sales by 2.8%, its market share dropped by 0.1 percentage point to 5% in the period.
Meanwhile online grocery retailer Ocado experienced sales growth of 8.5% which means it now accounts for 1.2% of the grocery market.
