Sainsbury's close to losing second spot to resurgent Asda

Till receipts for the 12 weeks to 25 March, compiled by Kantar Worldpanel, show the pair both saw sales growth of 2.4%, while Walmart's Asda grew 1.6% and Sainsbury's crawled forward just 0.6%. Across the whole of the grocery market, sales increased in value by 2.5% compared to this time last year in spite of the heavy snow during the period.

Rival research from Nielsen also released on Wednesday for the twelve weeks ending 24 March, showed Tesco sales up 3.1% - its fifth consecutive period of 3%-plus growth, followed by Asda's 2.9% as its recovery in sales "continued to gain momentum”. Sainsbury's was up 1.0% and Morrisons up 1.8%

Combined with shop price inflation, which slowed during the period, shoppers spent 3.3% more on groceries compared to the same period last year, Nielsen said, or 2.6% more if excluding the discounters.

As discounters Aldi and Lidl both grew sales more than 10%, according to Kantar's data, with the latter overtaking Waitrose to become the UK's seventh largest grocery group, the 'big four' struggled to hold onto market share.

Although Kantar said Tesco held onto its 27.6% share, Morrison saw its share of the market drop to 10.4% from 10.5%, with Asda falling 0.2 percentage points to 15.6%, where it is within spitting distance of Sainsbury's, which slipped to 15.8% from 16.1%.

Sainsbury’s continued its move away from promotions, Kantar noted, with only 32.7% of sales achieved while a product was on offer.

“The Beast from the East played havoc with consumers’ usual shopping plans," said Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel, though this saw shoppers stockpiled groceries in the run up to and during the cold snap, buying 4% more items than normal but visited stores 5% less often, meaning there was £22m in overall lost sales from the snow.

Nielsen's UK head of retailer insight, Mike Watkins, said the winter weather in late February and early March "certainly disrupted shopping patterns but not enough to knock food retail out of its stride because its underlying health remains strong". Nielsen has Tesco's market share at 27.0%, Sainsbury's at 15.0%, Asda at 13.9% and Morrisons at 9.8%.

He said the supermarket sector's strength was built on the Big Four having "adapted well to changing market conditions and consumer behaviour", with the sector seeing 13 straight months of growth above 2%, in stark contrast to non-food retail "who are still adapting to their changing marketplace". He pointed out that even though grocery sales in the week of the storms fell 1%, they stormed 12% higher the week after, helped by Mother’s Day.

Also, Kantar suggested an earlier Easter in 2018 compared to 2017 sparked some earlier shopping from consumers during the month of March, with Easter egg sales up 69% compared to this time last year despite average prices jumping by 35p to £1.83.

"Almost 15m shoppers picked up Easter eggs last month while the average household, tempted by promotional offers, was swayed into buying at least two Easter eggs to meet their seasonal chocolate fix. Hot cross buns also saw a steep rise, with sales up £7.7m compared to this time last year,” McKevitt said.

Warming foods and drinks were the go-to items for customers after braving the snowy weather – sales of hot beverages and tinned soup grew by 8.4% and 27.5% respectively over the month.