Dunnes leapfrogs Tesco to become Ireland's second largest supermarket
New stats show 22% of Irish grocery shoppers do their spending in Dunnes.
DUNNES STORES HAS jumped ahead of Tesco to take the position of Ireland’s second-largest supermarket after a good quarter in which its sales strongly expanded.
According to the Irish arm of Kantar Worldpanel, an international agency that provides information on consumer brands, Dunnes now has a 22% share of the Irish grocery market.
Sales at the retailer grew by 6.2% during the 12 weeks ending 9 October, helping the grocer rise to second position overall.
Although it slipped from second position to third and its sales dropped by 1.3%, Kantar noted that Tesco’s performance has actually “improved compared to previous months”.
It said that the English-owned supermarket’s value sales drop was “the lowest level of decline since May this year” and noted that volume sales increased. Tesco’s market share now stands at 21.6%.
SuperValu still holds the top spot with 22.4% of the Irish grocery market. Kantar said that business “has managed to recruit an additional 38,000 shoppers during the past 12 weeks compared with last year”.
Although its sales rose by about 3% on a value basis, SuperValu’s market share actually dropped slightly compared to the previous quarter as its rivals, such as Dunnes, made gains.
German stores Lidl and Aldi now hold a combined 23% of the market, up from 22.5% in the previous quarter as both reported increased sales.
Aldi enjoyed the strongest growth across the market this quarter, with sales 6.6% higher than last year boosting its share of the market to 11.4%.
Spending more
Kantar Worldpanel director David Berry said that the main thing driving growth for Dunnes over the past year “has been an increase in the size of the average shopping trip, which has grown by €3 to €38.10″.
“The retailer with the next largest trip size is Aldi, where shoppers part with €25.10 on average – €13 less than at Dunnes,” he said.
“Since its introduction Dunnes’ ‘shop and save’ initiative has been very successful in persuading shoppers to spend more, and we’ve seen an 18% increase in shopping trips where consumers spend over €100 since last year.”
Berry also noted that the average Lidl shopper visited the retailer 11 times over the past quarter.
“In what looks like a shift to an increasing reliance on its own brand lines, branded items accounted for just 10% of Lidl’s sales during the past 12 weeks compared to over 20% in 2012,” he said.
To get its data Kantar Worldpanel Ireland monitors the household grocery purchasing habits of 5,000 “demographically representative” households in the Republic of Ireland. All data discussed is based on the value of items being bought by these consumers.
