Tesco has maintained its leading position at the top of the Irish grocery sector with a 24.8% market share for the 12 weeks to 13 September 2015, according to the latest figures from Kantar Worldpanel.

Interestingly, after a difficult number of years for the UK retailer, the latest figures from Kantar also show that Tesco has recorded sales growth of 0.3% – the first time it has done so since early 2013. Kantar said the increase was driven by a modest increase in shopper numbers, coupled with the back-to-school season, as families with children increased their weekly spend by 4%.

SuperValu remains close behind Tesco in second place with a 24.3% market share, while Dunnes Stores remains in third with a 22.7% share of the Irish grocery market.

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According to Kantar, shoppers are now spending almost €50 more with Dunnes than they did this time last year, thanks to the retailer’s ‘‘Shop & Save’’ campaign. Year on year, volume sales increased by 5% for Dunnes, despite the privately owned retailer seeing a 70,000 drop in shopper numbers over the past year.

Discounters

The discounters continue to perform strongly. Lidl posted sales growth of 9.5% for the 12-week period – by far the strongest of all the retailers. The German discounter has attracted an additional 40,000 customers in the past year as it maintained a market share of 9%. The average spend of each shopper at Lidl has grown by more than 5% in the last year to €22.84 per trip.

The other discounter, Aldi, slightly increased its market share to 8.7%. Sales continued to grow for Aldi as they increased by 3.6%, despite the retailer actually seeing a fall-off in the number of customers entering its stores over the period. Just like Lidl, the average customer spend with Aldi is increasing – rising by 6% compared with last year to €170 per customer on average.