Top four ‘have enough shoppers’

The top four retailers have enough shoppers in stores but must work harder to “do something with them”, delegates at FPJ Live have heard.

Figures presented by Ed Garner, communications director at Kantar Worldpanel speaking in the first session of the day, showed that over the last four weeks, 91 per cent of discounters’ shoppers also shopped elsewhere.

“This is very important, because it means that the big four actually have the shoppers,” he said. “The challenge is not to get the shoppers in the store – but to do something with them.

“People aren’t flocking to discounters – that’s a journalistic term – really what’s happening is they are adding discounters to their repertoire and buying more when they’re there.'

However, Garner warned that in many areas the discounters continue to develop and outperform the market in many areas, including through marketing strategy, sales and a changing customer profile.

“The discounters are now in the middle demographic – Aldi shoppers are pretty much bang on average.

“Aldi and Lidl together overtook the Co-op some time back, and Aldi is now bigger than Waitrose. Communication has also changed – both discounters have better marketing campaigns.”

But he added: “Market share has grown much faster than their store base. Consequently, they have to make decisions on range as they have significantly less SKUs than the top four. The result is that if you go to a discounter, you might have to go elsewhere to finish your shop.”