Keeping costs down remains a priority for shoppers, says Nielsen

Shoppers are continuing to priortise saving money and avoiding waste to keep costs down, according to new data from Nielsen.

The firm published its latest total till sales at UK supermarkets in the last four weeks ending 27 January today.

It shows an overall growth of 6.6% in sales, reflective of a slow down of 6.1% in food inflation currently at its lowest rate since June 2022.

Shoppers priortised simple winter meals, due to there being wetter weather and storms over January. This included a growth in sales of fresh meat (11%) and fresh poultry (10%), alongside less expensive food options such as frozen chips (15%), frozen fruit (14%) and treated and prepared meat options (13%).

In addition, shoppers were willing to adopt a flexitarian diet, with a growth in sales of dried vegetables and pulses (23%), rice and grains (22%), and herbs and spices (20%). The data also showed that sales of beer, wine and spirits are back in growth at 7.3%.

Prices slowly start to fall in stores, data shows

UK head of retailer and business insight Mike Watkins said: “Shopping visits increased again in January and was helped by the return of smaller baskets after the big trolley spends in December. In addition, many households were moderating spend as paying off Christmas bills takes priority. To put this in context shoppers spent 24% less on food and drink in January compared to December.

“During the height of the cost-of-living squeeze in early 2023, discounter growth was around 20%. However, this level of growth was not sustainable, so it’s no surprise to see growths back to 10% over the last 12 weeks given the slowdown in inflation.

“Whilst consumer confidence is slowly improving, there remains some caution for FMCG spend as NIQ Homescan research also shows that 62% of households anticipate that in the first part of 2024 they will be moderately/severely affected [more so for households with families] which is up from 57% at the end of last year.”

In regard to supermarket performance, Lidl (+13.2%) was the fastest-growing retailer, followed by M&S (+11.6%) and Ocado (+11.3%) was the fastest-growing retailer. Meanwhile, growth at Sainsbury’s (8.4%) was just ahead of Tesco (+6.9%).

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