Asda has grown its market share to an all-time high as the impact of last year’s acquisition of Netto’s UK stores boosted sales.
According to the latest market share figures released by Kantar Worldpanel today (27 March), Asda’s year-on-year growth rate currently stands at 7.8%, propelling its share of UK grocery sales to 17.9%, up 0.6 percentage points year-on-year. Overall, the market grew by 4% in the 12-week period.
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Kantar figures look at total sales value rather than the same-store performance and the majority of Asda’s growth is due to the integration of the Netto stores it acquired last year. Last month, Asda revealed its like-for-like sales growth in the quarter to 7 January stood at just 1%.
Meanwhile, growth at the country’s largest retailer Tesco continues to lag the market at 2.7%, causing a drop in market share to 30.2% from 30.6% in the comparable period of last year.
However, Tesco’s performance has improved since the start of this year. In the 12 weeks to 19 February, Kantar said Tesco’s share hit its lowest level for seven years at 29.7%.
Tesco has recently moved to increase its focus on its UK business in a bid to boost its performance in the market. At the end of February, the firm said it was making a “significant” investment in improving customer service and product range and earlier this month the firm revealed that group CEO Philip Clarke will take on responsibility for the UK.
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By GlobalDataLooking to the rest of the market, Kantar said Sainsbury’s and Morrisons’ share remained unchanged at 4.1% and 3.4% respectively.
Edward Garner, director at Kantar Worldpanel, added that Waitrose, Aldi, Iceland and Lidl “continue to out-perform the market”.
Meanwhile, according to the Kantar data, grocery inflation was 5.5% in the period. Kantar said shoppers were having to take advantage of the current “crop of special offers”.
