Tesco’s market share declines to lowest in seven years

UK retail giant Tesco's grocery market share declined to its lowest level in around seven years in 2011, in a blow to chief executive Philip Clarke during his first year at the helm.

Tesco issued its first profit warning in 20 years last month and saw its market dip by 0.6 per cent to 29.9 per cent over the 12 weeks to 22 January, the closely watched Kantar Worldpanel data revealed.

This was the first instance since May 2005 that Tesco's market share was down below 30 per cent, when it was at 29.7 per cent.

The beneficiaries of Tesco's downturn mainly appear to be Asda and Sainsbury's as they gained significantly from Tesco's woes. Marks & Spencer, Waitrose, Aldi and Lidl have also got a share of the spoils, with spending appearing to be more polarised between discounters and the more premium grocers.

According to some analysts, when an enterprise was the size of Tesco, any bump it met would offer any opportunity to the rest to feed off it.

Clarke, who has been at Tesco for life and who became chief executive in March 2011, admitted that the chain committed a series of judgment errors, such as not issuing enough coupons, before Christmas, which fed a 2.3 per cent fall in its UK like-for-like sales over the six weeks to 7 January.