Sainsbury's attracts 250k new shoppers and grows sales

Sainsbury’s has grown sales by 0.9 per cent compared with a year ago, attracting 250,000 new shoppers through the door in the last 12 weeks.

The retailer has held its share of the UK grocery market steady at 16.2 per cent, helped by the continued expansion of its Sainsbury’s Local outlets.

These results were revealed in the latest grocery share figures from Kantar Worldpanel, published today (22 September) for the 12 weeks ending 13 September 2015.

This is the sixth consecutive month that sales among the grocers have grown by less than 1 per cent.

Sainsbury’s was the only one of the ‘big four’ retailers to keep pace with the market, as the ongoing price war continues to help shoppers reduce their grocery spend.

Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel, said: “Tesco has also increased revenues through its Express convenience stores, although overall sales fell by 1 per cent and market share dropped by 0.6 percentage points to 28.2 per cent.

'Sales at Morrisons decreased by 1.4 per cent, taking share to 10.7 per cent, with this likely to fall further in the coming months as the recently announced store closures take effect.'

Asda has retained its position as the nation’s second largest supermarket despite market share falling to 16.7 per cent, with sales down by 2.9 per cen compared to a year ago.

Lidl’s sales grew by 16 per cent to reach a new market share high of 4.2 per cent, thanks in part to its successful ‘Lidl surprises’ campaign.

Aldi also demonstrated strong sales growth, up by 17.3 per cent, taking a 5.6 per cent share of the market. The discount retailers continue to strengthen their position in the market with some 56 per cent of British households visiting either an Aldi or a Lidl in the past 12 weeks.

There was also success for Iceland, Waitrose and the Co-operative, which saw sales growth of 3.4 per cent, 2.9 per cent and 1 per cent respectively.

McKevitt added: “With shoppers moving their custom away from the traditional, larger-size supermarket stores, online sales are continuing to boom and are up by 12 per cent compared with a year ago.

'Almost 7 per cent of grocery sales are currently purchased through the Internet and existing online supermarkets will be watching closely to see when Amazon Fresh will launch in the UK and whether it will steal market share or grow the online market even further.”