‘Moonsoon’ weather costs supermarkets £120m in missed sales
UK supermarkets lost out on more than £120m in missed sales in the past four weeks as growth in the grocery sector continued to slow.
Industry sales increased by just 0.4% in the four weeks to 15 June 2019 (Nielsen Scantrack Grocery Multiples) as a shift in weather to cold and wet conditions caused shoppers to hold back spend and purchase fewer items than they would during warmer weather conditions - like the country experienced this time last year.
Over the last 12 weeks, sales at the big four supermarkets were flat or in slight decline, with the strongest sales at The Co-operative (+1.9%), Iceland (+2.2%), Aldi (+9.4%) and Lidl (+15.2%), according to the data.
Tesco continues to dominate in market share (26.5%), but the rising combined market share of Aldi (9.5%) and Lidl (6.4%) places the combined discounters in second position, overtaking Sainsbury’s (14.3%) and Asda (13.6%).
Looking at the latest data, it is clear that “promotions, events and the vagaries of the weather have a big impact on supermarket sales”, said Mike Watkins, Nielsen’s UK head of retailer & business insight.
“The summer trading season stretches 18 weeks from the first May bank holiday to the last week in August. In the first seven weeks of summer 2019, shoppers have so far spent £350m’ less in supermarkets. This equates to a 2.1% fall in value sales compared to the same time period last year.”
This means that for supermarkets to match the same level of sales as last summer, shoppers would now have to spend £26bn during the remaining 11 weeks.
“This looks a tall order as weekly growth is currently down, and we would need a sustained heatwave through to August, as we had last summer, just for the growth at supermarkets to stand still,” said Watkins.
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