Ocado was the fastest growing retailer in Britain for the 12 weeks to 17 March as it reaped the rewards of a sustained voucher campaign which helped attract customers.
The online grocer improved sales by 9.5% over the period, ahead of the total online market which rose by 6.6%, fresh data from Kantar shows.
It comes as Ocado unveiled its first quarter results this morning, which showed that sales had surged 10.6% thanks to an uptick in customer numbers as it continues its investment into strengthening its product offering.
The market share of Britain’s two largest grocers, Tesco and Sainsbury’s, climbed by 5.8% and 6.7% respectively on an annual basis over the period, with bith adding 0.4 percentage points each to their shares taking them to 27.3% and 15.2%.
Morrisons saw sales increase 3.6% in the latest 12 weeks, holding a market share of 8.7% while Asda experienced a modest sales growth of 0.2%, with its market share now at 13.8%.
Aldi sales rise 3.1%, as it maintained a market share of 9.8% as fellow discounter Lidl achieved significant growth with revenue rising 8.8%, resulting in a market share of 7.8%.
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Kantar data also showed that supermarket prices were 4.5% higher than a year ago in March, the lowest inflation rate since February 2022 and a significant fall from last month’s 5.3%.
Meanwhile, sales of branded goods pushed ahead of own label products during the month. Premium own-label lines grew by 16.1% this month – the quickest rate in almost three years.
Kantar head of retail and consumer insight Fraser McKevitt said: “Grocery inflation has come down significantly since hitting an eye-watering peak of 17% in March 2023.
“However, despite this continued slowdown, many British households are still feeling the squeeze. 23% identified themselves as struggling financially in our data* – the same proportion as reported in November last year.”
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