While the United Kingdom gears up for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations and a four-day extended bank holiday from 2 to 5 June, shoppers are facing the highest inflation for grocery sales prices in 13 years.
During the 12 weeks to 15 May 2022, U.K. supermarket sales fell 4.4 percent, according to the latest take-home grocery figures from data insights company Kantar, although it finds that sales declined at a softer rate of 1.7 percent over the past month.
Despite the decline, it was still the best performance figures seen since Christmas. Kantar attributed the positive bump to people looking ahead to the Jubilee weekend.
However, the analysis determines that like-for-like grocery prices have increased by 7 percent over the past four weeks compared with the same time last year, the highest level of grocery inflation since May 2009.
Kantar Head of Retail and Consumer Insight Fraser McKevitt said that people are really feeling the squeeze at the supermarket tills and are having to stretch their budgets further to accommodate rising prices.
“Understandably, only a third of consumers now think of themselves as being in a ‘comfortable’ financial situation,” McKevitt said. “ In our recent Kantar Pressure Groups survey, 43 percent of households described themselves as ‘managing’ while 22 percent said they were ‘struggling’. Within the growing group of shoppers struggling to make ends meet, the rising price of groceries is of concern to over nine in 10 people, making it the second most important issue behind the spiralling cost of energy bills.”
Despite rising inflation levels, Kantar expects people to celebrate the Jubilee with friends and family. The Diamond Jubilee in 2012 brought a 10 percent boost in supermarket sales in the week leading up to the festivities, McKevitt said.
“We should never underestimate the appetite for a party, especially a royal one,” he said.
With sales rising by 6 percent, Lidl was the fastest-growing retailer during the 12 weeks to 15 May, slightly ahead of Aldi, which increased sales by 5.8 percent.
“Lidl has hit a new market share high of 6.9 percent, a 0.7 percentage point increase on this time last year. Aldi also broke records, climbing to a 9 percent share of the market for the first time, an increase of 0.9 percentage points versus 2021,” McKevitt said.
Tesco performed ahead of the wider market increasing its share by 0.4 percentage points to 27.4 percent, while Sainsbury’s, the U.K.’s second-largest grocer, had a 14.8 percent share, and third-placed Asda accounted for 13.8 percent of the total market.
Photo courtesy of Gary L Hider/Shutterstock
