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Kantar Worldpanel: Weather turns heat up on grocery sales

Published:  23 August, 2016

According to Kantar Worldpanel figures out this week, the good weather helped UK consumers increase their spend with grocers, with market growth hitting 0.3%.

This may seem relatively small but this is the fastest acceleration of growth since March 2016, which jumped due to primarily to easter spending landing earlier this year. 

"The sun's eventual appearance was a welcome boost to the market after a delayed start to the summer," said Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel,

The figures cover the 12 weeks ending on 14 August 2016.

Importantly the rise in spend happened simultaneously while promotion sales have dropped to their lowest level since September 2010.

"Only 37.7% of grocery sales were bought on any kind of promotion this period - a significant decrease from highs of over 40% we were seeing in 2015," said McKevitt. He pointed out that much of where consumers are looking for good value is through own-label brands, which on the premium side are out performing the value end of the spectrum.

He said: "Shoppers are clearly responding to the better value offered through own label rather than money off, with own brand goods growing at both ends of the price spectrum: premium retailer brands are up by 9% and value lines up by 2%."

Interestingly there has been little to no effect of Brexit on price increases, with price deflation still ongoing and a basket of goods still costing 1.3% less than it did a year ago.

The discounters continued to expand with Lidl remaining the fastest growing grocer with sales up 12.2%. Aldi grew by 10.4%.

The Co-op continues to climb, with sales up 2.2% and market share hitting 6.6%- its highest since 2012.

Sainsbury's, Morrison, Asda and Tesco all declined slightly, by -0.6% , -1.8%,-5.5% and -0.4% respectively.

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