Kantar Worldpanel have just released some of the food retailers figures (but only the ''good news'' figures) over the first 4 week period of 2014, from 30th December 2013-26th January 2014- notably including the 30th and 31st January. Even if the years change, Leclerc's performance doesn't. Growth rate remains robust with an increase of +0.8pt to 19,8% of its market share. According to Kantar, ''the click and collect stores offer growth opportunities (1.5% MS value at CAM P01- year to date ending 26th January 2014- i.e. +0.5pt) whilst the attraction of E.Leclerc stores is not waning'', with almost 400,000 new clients over the last 12 months.
However System U and Intermarché, who progressed well in 2013, are seeing their market shares either only just stabilise or, for the latter, decrease by 0.2pt. The differences are not considered statistically significant and the panel credits Intermarché with a stable month.
Relative ''stability''
A concept mainly applied to Carrefour and Casino whose development has also been qualified as stable. The Casino group (11.6%) will have lost 0.1pt of market share (non significant) in January compared to -0.2 in December over the two previous periods. Kantar reveals a ''recovered dynamic for Géant (+0.1pt MS)'' whilst ''Franprix also affirms its better condition over the last few months with a +0.1pt rise''. An improvement for retailers from a group that lost up to one point of market share last February, and in April, due to high prices.
The Carrefour group gains 0.1pt of market share at 20.6%, the ''5th consecutive stable month''. Despite stability, Carrefour comes out of a (non significant) decrease of -0.3pt in December which followed 3 good growth periods of 0.4, 0.3 and 0.4 points of market share. Its hypermarkets in particular gain 0.2pt in January.
Looking at an average of these figures, Carrefour seems much more stable than Casino, with even a clear come-back since October, broken by a ''blip''. Regarding Casino, this looks more like containment rather than proven stability.
According to Kantar, Auchan is also stable with 11.7% of market share and ''a significant input from click and collect stores''.
Hard discount weeps while click and collect is laughing
In general, homes are ''continuing to move away from discount'', which has dropped -0.3 pt to 11.6% of market share. However Aldi has increased +0.1pt to 2.4% of market share over the period. Hypermarkets and online channels, click and collect in particular (4.1% of MS +0.6pt), are the most dynamic sectors. The local sector shows+0.1pt of MS to 5.5% of MS.
Kantar notes that these developments have occurred with ''HM + SM + Discount + Local + Internet recovering in January with a +2.5% turnover (-1.7% in December 2013)''. Over the period between December 2013-January 2014 household spending increased only slightly (+0.3%) with a small increase in store visits to 14.7 (+0.3 visits) and spending per basket has shrunk by 60 cents (30.4€ in January 2014).
The morale of French spending remains low but is improving by 2 pts over the period from 2-29 December 2013
