Grocery market falls into decline as sales slip 0.2%

Kantar Worldpanel head of retail and consumer insight Fraser McKevitt said: “The declining grocery market will be of concern to retailers as they gear up for the key Christmas trading season.

“The fight for a bigger share of sales has ignited a price war which means an average basket of everyday goods such as milk, bread and vegetables now costs 0.4% less than it did this time last year.  This is bad news for retailers, but good news for shoppers with price deflation forecast to continue well into 2015.”

For the 12 weeks ending November 9, the discounters performed strongly again. Aldi sales are 25.5% higher than last year and it now has a record high market share of 4.9%. Lidl reported a 16.8% sales increase with its share growing to 3.5%.

Waitrose is also growing at the other end of the market, with sales growth of 5.6% taking its share to 5.1%.

Asda recorded the best performance among the big four. Its sales have fallen in line with the overall market and share has held steady at 17.2%. Sainsbury’s and Morrisons have both recorded a decline in share compared with last year, with sales down 2.5% and 3.3% respectively. Tesco’s sales are down by 3.7% although the rate at which it is losing market share has slowed.