56% of British households have shopped in Aldi or Lidl in the past 12 weeks
Over half of shoppers in Britain have visited either an Aldi or a Lidl in the past three months, which has resulted in the discounters taking record share of the grocery market.
Both Aldi and Lidl have ramped up their marketing efforts recently, with the former now experimenting with a YouTube channel and the latter upping its ad spend by 261 per cent year on year to support its campaign to pit the quality of own-brand products against branded goods.
According to the latest grocery share figures from Kantar Worldpanel, published today for the 12 weeks ending 13 September 2015, Lidl’s sales grew by 16 per cent to reach a new market share high of 4.2 per cent.
Aldi also demonstrated strong sales growth, up by 17.3 per cent to take a 5.6 per cent share of the market.
It comes against a backdrop of stagnation in the grocery market, making it the sixth consecutive month that sales among the grocers have grown by less than one per cent.
Tesco’s overall sales fell by one per cent while its dominant market share has once again dropped by 0.6 percentage points to 28.2 per cent.
Despite Asda’s market share falling to 16.7 per cent, and sales down by 2.9 per cent compared to a year ago, Asda has retained its position as the nation’s second largest supermarket.
Morrisons sales decreased by 1.4 per cent to take its market share to 10.7 per cent. Kantar analysts predicted this is likely to fall further in the coming months as the recently announced store closures take effect. It is hoping for a comeback in the coming months with a plan to focus on in-store personalisation.
Sainsbury’s was the only one of the ‘big four’ retailers to keep pace with the market and managed to grow sales by 0.9 per cent compared with a year ago, attracting 250,000 new shoppers through the door in the last 12 weeks. A flurry of marketing activity in the past three months has seen it urge consumers to ‘twist your favourite’ recipes.
The grocery market could see yet more turbulence, with the arrival of Amazon Fresh next month. Online makes up almost seven per cent of grocery sales and is continuing to grow a pace. As such, the industry – even the confident discounters which both opted against an online presence – will be keeping an eye on whether Amazon will steal market share or grow the online market even further.