SuperValu steals supermarket top slot from Tesco

SuperValu has taken over from Tesco as the largest grocery retailer in the State ending a period of overseas dominance stretching back over 10 years.

The latest supermarket share figures from Kantar Worldpanel show SuperValu with a market share of 24.9 per cent compared with to the 24.7 per cent Tesco now has.

"One of the key rules in driving sales growth is that you need to broaden your appeal to attract new consumers to your brand. SuperValu has consistently achieved this with eighteen consecutive periods of footfall growth increasing its shopper numbers by 63,000," Kantar's director David Berry, said.

“Undoubtedly one of the key milestones in helping SuperValu move to the top of the pile was the acquisition of the Superquinn business in July 2011,” he added.

Rebranding the 24 Superquinn stores under the SuperValu banner in February 2014 led to an immediate jump in market share from 20 per cent to 25.1 per cent. “More importantly, SuperValu’s performance within Dublin improved dramatically as its market share more than doubled from 9.5 per cent to 22.2 per cent today,” Mr Berry said.

Tesco’s story is one of mixed performance. Sales are down year on year and as a result market share has dipped from 25.9 per cent to 24.7 per cent.

Although the British retailing giant will be disappointed to have lost its number one position, it can draw some positives from the fact that 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 Stores has continued to enjoy healthy growth, with a 4.9 per cent sales increase improving its market share to 22.7 per cent.

This 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.

The performance of both Aldi and Lidl has remained impressive with sales growth of 11.1 per cent and 9.7 per cent respectively. Aldi has successfully recruited new shoppers to its stores, while Lidl shoppers are returning to the retailer more often.

The grocery market has returned to deflation of -0.1 per cent for the 12 week period ending 29th March 2015, down from 1.2 per cent last period. It is the lowest level since 2010.