Grocery price war sees vegetable sales up as more spent on alcohol

Correspondent

The value of alcohol sales in the grocery market increased by 13.4 per cent last Christmas, compared with the previous Christmas, while we spent 5.1 per cent more on luxuries such as chocolates, confectionery, crisps and pâté .

The figures were presented by David Berry, commercial director of the consumer research firm Kantar Worldpanel at a briefing for clients yesterday.

Increased duty
He said part of the increase in the value of alcohol sales was due to the increased duty on alcohol in October's budget. "But also it may be a sign that people wanted to spend a bit more. I guess the spending on niceties is a positive sign as well."

While the spend on alcohol and luxuries increased significantly, there was a 7.9 per cent drop in spending on Christmas dinner fare.

Mr Berry said the pre-Christmas vegetable price war meant that people bought 16 per cent more vegetables in the run-up to Christmas but paid 20 per cent less for them.

He said consumer confidence was improving but there was still a “yo-yo approach” to grocery shopping with spending up one month and back the next. “There’s not consistent growth coming through yet,” he said.

However, that growth will come, according to Kantar Worldpanel, which has predicted that the value of the grocery market will grow from €8.9 billion to €9.8 billion by 2018.

Mr Berry said year-on-year growth of 1.5 per cent was expected this year and this would have risen to 2.5 per cent by 2018.

There were signs that some people were adopting a “little and often” approach, making more trips to supermarkets and shopping in more stores.

Own-brand sales
There had been "an explosion" in own-brand sales at Christmas, with a 10 per cent increase in sales of both value own-brand products and premium own-brand products. Mr Berry said some €1.4 million in spend moved from branded goods to premium own-label products at Christmas.

The increasing dominance of Aldi is highlighted by the research which found that, in the 12 weeks up to January 5th, the value of Aldi sales grew by 20.1 per cent, Lidl saw a 12.2 per cent increase and SuperValu sales grew by 1.3 per cent. Superquinn sales fell by 6.4 per cent in the same period, while market leader Tesco dropped by 6.2 per cent.

According to Kantar, Aldi took €7.3 million in sales from Dunnes Stores in the 12 weeks to January 5th. It took €5.7 million in sales from Tesco and €4.2 million from SuperValu.