Every month, Kantar Worldpanel provides an update on market share of the different food shops in Ireland and the headline this time – at least on RTE News – is “SuperValu remains largest grocery retailer“. This is definitely correct when you look at the market share numbers, but what I find a lot more interesting is that the two discount supermarkets Aldi and Lidl are combined the largest food sellers in Ireland.
They are two separate shops and on one hand you can’t shouldn’t combine their market share. But on the other hand they BOTH have – in contrast to the others – a rather unique approach to selling food, where own branded products is the majority of products.
The figures are SuperValu 22.1%, Tesco 22.0%, Dunnes Stores 21.6%, Lidl 11.8%, Aldi 11.6%
So if you combine Lidl and Aldi, you arrive at 23.4% and if you compare it to how close the other three are to each others, then a lead of 1.3% is HUGE!
There are still people in Ireland that have never bought anything in Lidl or Aldi and there are still parts of Dublin (Castleknock!) that fight tooth and nail against one of the discounters opening in prime locations there. Odd! Maybe it is a type of snobbery? It certainly is not smart.
