SUPERVALU WON THE battle of the supermarkets this spring, maintaining its position as Ireland’s most popular grocery store.
The Musgrave Group chain captured 23% of the market share in a 12-week period ending 24 April this year. It increased its sales by 2.8% compared to the same period last year, according to consultancy group Kantar Worldpanel.
Tesco, which was dethroned as Ireland’s most popular supermarket last year, remains in second place with a market share of 22.2%.
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Overall, grocery sales increased by 3.8% on last year, Kantar Worldpanel commercial director, David Berry, said.
As competition amongst the main grocery retailers remains intense, we’re actually seeing shoppers visit stores more often.
The average household visited the supermarket 63 times over the latest 12 weeks – four more trips than last year.
That’s an average of 5.25 trips to the supermarket every week, meaning the traditional weekly ‘big shop’ could well be a thing of the past.
Supervalu’s high sales were in part thanks to its Good Food Karma campaign, which encourages the public to cook meals from scratch, Berry said.
We’ve seen consumers continue to allocate more of their shopping budget to fresh food over the past four years, and SuperValu has managed to capitalise on this very successfully.
Interestingly, Tesco managed to sell more items this year, but at a lower average price as it vies to win back customers.
Dunnes remained in third place, winning 21.5% of the market share. The retailer saw sales growth of 8%.
Berry said this was thanks in part to a campaign by Dunnes to encourage shoppers to spend more money in return for money off the next visit.
Bigger trips have been the main driver of this growth, with an additional €2.50 spent each time the tills ring compared with the same time last year.
Lidl, which had 11.2% of the market share, held on to its position as Ireland’s fastest growing supermarket. The German discount stores, Lidl and Aldi were in fourth and fifth place respectively.
An additional 43,000 more shoppers visited Lidl this year and it’s getting customers through the door more often than ever before – the average number of visits per person increased to a record high of 10.6 trips in 12 weeks.
Meanwhile, Aldi grew its sales by 1%, increasing its share of the market to 10.9%.
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