French consumer spend was down 3.9% year-on-year in the period from 14 June to 11 July, according to Kantar, indicating a return to normality as restrictions ease, however shopping habits remain altered.
French consumers continue to shop less often, and purchase larger baskets, Kantar said, while e-commerce continues to gain traction – online spend saw a market share increase of 0.7 percentage points in the period, and is up 2.5 percentage points on two years ago.
Overall, consumer spend in the so-called P7 2021 period were 1% higher than in the corresponding period in 2019.
Retailer Performance In P7
In terms of the performance of France's largest grocers, Le Groupement Les Mousquetaires saw the strongest growth in market share in the period, of 0.7 percentage points, taking its share to 16.0%.
This was mainly driven by its Intermarché banner, which saw increased traffic both in-store and online. Elsewhere, Intermarché recently announced a new purchasing agreement with Groupe Casino.
Le Groupement U reported a 0.4 percentage point increase in P7, to 11.4% market share, with the retailer seeing both an increase in shoppers as well as improved customer loyalty.
Carrefour maintained its dynamism for the fifth period in a row, seeing its market share rise 0.3 percentage points. This included a 0.2 percentage point increase at its Carrefour hypermarket business, and a 0.1 point gain at Carrefour Market, while the group has also seen online sales rise.
Discounter Aldi posted a 0.2 percentage point gain (to 2.6%), with an additional 707,000 French households shopping at the discounter, largely due to an increase in the number of stores.
Market leader E.Leclerc, meanwhile, posted a 0.1 percentage point gain to 22.6%, largely driven by improved online sales, according to Kantar.
© 2021 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest Retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
