Yet again, Sainsbury’s has come out on top as the best performing ‘big four’ supermarket over the Christmas period so far, with its Taste The Difference brand having the biggest-ever festive sales. The results were boosted by the supermarket promoting simple, regular price cuts instead of multi-buy deals which attracted a further 114,000 customers which saw an 0.8% increase in total sales compared to last year.
Mike Coupe, chief executive, said: “We have traded well during the festive period in a highly competitive market. Our stores delivered excellent levels of service and availability and we launched several new seasonal products and range improvements. As a result we have seen our market share grow in the quarter.”
Kantar Worldpanel has released figures showing that around one in eight shoppers did their biggest December shop at Lidl or Aldi, with Lidl being the quickest growing supermarket in 2015 where sales rose 18.5% and Aldi followed with a rise of 13.3%.
Head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel, Fraser McKevitt, said: "Shoppers reaped the benefit of falling prices this Christmas, with groceries 1.8% cheaper than last year. The amount spent on a typical Christmas dinner fell even faster - down by 2.2% - mainly due to cheaper poultry and traditional vegetable trimmings.
“Wednesday 23rd December was the single biggest shopping day of the year, but the anticipated uplift from an extra day in the week before Christmas didn't help the supermarkets overall.
Consumers simply delayed their shopping trips later this year, rather than making any extra trips." He added "The discounters are continuing to establish themselves in the minds of British consumers - almost one in eight did their single biggest December shopping trip in Aldi or Lidl, on top of the 15.6 m households who visited at some point in the 12 weeks.
"That is an increase of nearly 1m shoppers on last year, and their combined share is up from 8.3% last year to 9.7%."
