DUBLIN: SuperValu has taken over from Tesco as Ireland’s largest grocery retailer, according to the latest supermarket share figures from Kantar Worldpanel in Ireland.
SuperValu now has a 24.9pc share of the grocery market, compared with Tesco’s 24.7pc, Dunnes’ 22.7pc, Aldi’s 8.7pc and Lidl’s 8.2pc. Other outlets make up the remaining 10.9pc.
“One of the key rules in driving sales growth is that you need to broaden your appeal to attract new consumers to your brand,” said David Berry, director at Kantar Worldpanel. “SuperValu has consistently achieved this with 18 consecutive periods of footfall growth increasing its shopper numbers by 63,000.”
A key contributor to the retailer’s growth was the acquisition of the Superquinn business in July 2011. Rebranding the 24 Superquinn stores under the SuperValu banner in February 2014 led to an immediate jump in market share from 20pc to 25.1pc.
More importantly, SuperValu’s performance within Dublin improved dramatically as its market share more than doubled from 9.5pc to 22.2pc today,” Berry said.
According to Kantar, Tesco’s sales are down year-on-year resulting in a drop in its a market share from 25.9pc to 24.7pc. The company said, however, that there are some positive signs for the retailer. It has not lost shoppers since this time last year and its customers are making the same number of shopping trips with increased average basket sizes – the most positive results for these metrics in more than two years.
Dunnes continued to enjoy healthy growth, with a 4.9pc sales increase improving its market share to 22.7pc. This, Kantar said, has been fuelled by larger baskets, with two additional items included in each average trip, and can be linked to the retailer’s ‘Shop and Save’ voucher campaign which incentivised shoppers to spend more on each visit.
Aldi and Lidl, meanwhile, have seen sales growth of 11.1pc and 9.7pc respectively.Aldi has successfully recruited new shoppers to its stores, while Lidl shoppers are returning to the retailer more often.
