Tesco & Sainsbury's lead market share over rival Asda

Fueling recessionary concern Asda yesterday reported through Wal-mart a second quarterly drop in like-for-like sales, 0.4% lower in the three months to end May 2010 as figures show that Asda’s market share amonst supermarket rivals Tesco, Sainsbury and Morrisons, has slipped below 17%.

New store openings limited growth this year as also Asda indicated that promotions and lower prices for main food products did not have expected effect on turnover and profits as customers reigned in spending.

Asda acquired Netto UK stores last year, with the addition of Danish discount supermarkets operators existing UK oulets taking its number of Asda to 377 stores.

Asda itself was acquired by Wal-Mart in 1999, although it was decided to stay with the Asda brand name in the UK and the figures released were are part of the second quarter results from the giant US retailer.

Asda added that tax increases and cuts in government spending would make the next 18 months challenging for the company and it UK customers whilst Asda indicated that it expected that UK family’ disposable income would decline in the period.

Tesco TSCO grocery market share fell to 30.8%, according the Kantar World Panel market share data. J Sainsbury SBRY remained in third spot with a market share of 16.1%, up from 15.9% a year earlier. Morrison MRW edged up to 11.6% from 11.4% previously.

Kantar monitors the household grocery purchasing habits of 25,000 demographically representative households in the U.K and also indicated that discount retailers Aldi, ex-Netto and Lidl held a combined market share to 6.1% compared with 6.0% a year earlier.

Source : UKcitymedia.co.uk