Waitrose, the Co-operative, Sainsbury’s and the discount retailers all successfully grew ahead of the market and were the share winners over Christmas, although the biggest winners overall were shoppers who paid 2.2% less on average for their festive dinner than 12 months before, according to Kantar Worldpanel (KW).
“Sainsbury’s was the best performing of the traditional supermarkets,” said KW’s head of retail and consumer insight, Fraser McKevitt, presenting the company’s review of the 12 trading weeks ending January 3, 2016. “The premium Taste the Difference brand posted Sainsbury’s biggest ever Christmas sales, while promotional efforts were concentrated on simple price cuts rather than complicated multi-buy deals. This helped attract an additional 114,000 shoppers, with sales increasing by 0.8% on the previous year.”
Aldi and Lidl continued their recent sales rise into the Christmas period with Lidl’s sales up by 18.5% during the review period and Aldi increasing sales by 13.3%.
“The discounters are continuing to establish themselves in the minds of British consumers,” said Mr McKevitt (pictured above). “Almost one in eight people did their single biggest December shopping trip in Aldi or Lidl, on top of the 15.6 million households who visited at some point in the 12 weeks. That is an increase of nearly one million shoppers on the year.”
However, despite Aldi and Lidl’s success, consumers are still spending most of their money in more traditional supermarkets, particularly in December, when the total discounter share dipped below the 10% achieved just before Christmas.