S-Group dominated grocery markets in Finland with big stores
As inflation has ravaged the grocery markets in Finland, the price has become ever more important. Similarly to any other Western grocery market, the price-driven players have gained the most from inflation. Prisma, the price leader from S-Group, grew the most during last year with a +8% growth. Lidl and S-Market followed Prisma with a +6% growth.
S-Markets big growth was slightly surprising given that the discussion in the media has concentrated on the price fight between Prisma and Lidl.
S-market has opened seven new stores but still managed to grow organically. The average sales per store increased from 10,1 M€ to 10,6 M€. Prisma also grew organically despite opening three new hypermarkets. Prisma sells on average 50,3 M€ compared to 32,3 M€ for an average K-Citymarket.
The biggest growth led Prisma to grow its market share the most, as the Kesko banners lost the most.
Somewhat surprisingly, the biggest losses in sales were recorded by the hypermarket chain K-Citymarket, which is supposed to be the price leader for Kesko with -a 1% decline at a time of double-digit inflation in food.
The overall grocery market grew by 3,7%. This was driven by inflation. The other interesting aspect of last year's grocery market was the continued increase in the average basket size. The average basket jumped during the pandemic from 21,9 € to 24,5 € and has continued to grow since. Last year the average basket size was 25 €. The growth last year was purely driven by inflation. Still, it is interesting how resilient the bigger average baskets have been.
Source: PTY
Of the different grocery concepts, big store formats have kept their advantage over smaller ones. The hypermarkets grew their share of the format only slightly to 30% (growth of 0,1%-point) as Prisma’s growth was hampered by the big decline of K-Citymarket. The biggest share growth was seen by the big supermarkets, which increased their market share from 38% to 38,4%. The big supermarkets and hypermarkets dominate the Finnish grocery market with 68,4% of all grocery sales.
