Comparing and contrasting the surge in grocery sales recorded in March and April 2020 with the current market realities is fascinating. With less than a month to run in the current financial year, we now have a greater evidence-led understanding of whether predictions of sustained behavioural change have played out. In other words, is there a ‘new normal’ in Australian grocery 2021 (and beyond)?
IRI shares its “2021 grocery market update” report in the July issue of Retail World.
Dynamic shifts in the performance narrative
IRI’s point-of-sale (scan) packaged grocery market analysis revealed a 9.4 per cent YOY dollar uplift in the 52 weeks to 3/1/21. Unit sales were up just under five per cent with Australians having paid, on average, 4.3 per cent extra for each packaged item scanned at the checkout. Nevertheless, in the final quarter of 2020 signals of normalisation materialised as sales growth slowed to 5.9 per cent and unit sales growth dipped below three per cent.
Rolling the scan data on another quarter (to 4/4/21) reveals an entirely different scenario. The packaged grocery market declined by 5.5 per cent in value and unit sales nosedived 8.0 per cent. Approaching two-thirds (64 per cent) of the packaged grocery categories are in decline in this latest quarter versus a quarter of categories across the full 52 weeks. The industry was never going to replicate the explosive sales recorded in the March quarter of 2020. But the negative growth scenario would be bleaker still had it not been for an earlier and comparably strong Easter trading performance in 2021 versus last year.
Read the “IRI 2021 grocery market update” report in full in the July issue of Retail World.