News and Trends

  Namnews, 25th February 2021 Analysts are predicting that the supermarket sector in Spain is heading for a fresh price war, led by Aldi and Lidl. Florencio Garcia from Kantar Spain believes chains will be rolling out further price reductions over the coming weeks and months to meet demand from consumers impacted by the pandemic. Garcia said: “Price cutting between Aldi and Lidl is inevitable but shoppers also want quality, and rivals to chains like Mercadona have learnt lessons from the past where they simply wanted to copy the success of the Spanish supermarket giant.” The country’s top three supermarket chains of Mercadona, Carrefour and DIA all lost market share in 2020, with Lidl leapfrogging DIA in terms of sales. The threat from Aldi and Lidl has seen Carrefour and DIA both enter the price war via special promotions and loyalty cards. Mercadona has held back from joining the battle, although recent reports suggest it has been lowering prices, particularly in the areas of fre...

Figures released recently by Kantar reveal how Spanish households have begun to modify their shopping behaviour as a result of the COVID-19 coronavirus. It is clear that the growing concern of Spanish households is beginning to effect consumption. The week of 24 February – 1 March showed an increase of 113% in consumer spending on FMCG compared to the weekly average of the previous two months. After the announcement of extraordinary measures on 10 March, this rose to 154%, increasing to 180% the following day across all channels. On the day of the announcement, spend in hyper and supermarkets shot up 160% and in local stores it reached 190%. The increase is seen in all distribution channels. *Source: Kantar (consumer panels) This impact is not limited only to areas with a health alert and seems to be fairly consistent across Spain. Source: Kantar (consumer panels) Before the declaration of special measures in Madrid, Vitoria and La Rioja, half th...