What you need to know

Grocery retailing in Ireland remains highly competitive. Tesco continues to perform well but the discounters are attracting more shoppers to their stores with a strong proposition on price and quality that is helping to grow the appeal of own-label products. Consumers show strong agreement that own-label products are just as good as branded alternatives and are increasingly favouring own-label goods within household staple categories. While branded products are favoured in treat categories as consumers trade up to reward themselves, manufacturers will need to do more to demonstrate their value and tell their unique story to increase consumers’ purchase intention of everyday items.

Issues covered in this Report

This Report will examine the grocery retailing sector in Ireland through exploring the issues that are driving growth on the island of Ireland. Covered in this Report is the sale of all grocery items including market segmentation of supermarket retail sales via mainstream supermarkets, such as Tesco, Asda, SuperValu and Dunnes Stores. The sale of groceries through convenience format stores, such as Spar, and the hard discounters, Aldi and Lidl, is also discussed, however, it is not included in the Market Size and Forecast section.

Each store type is defined as follows:

Supermarket – A supermarket sells a wide variety of goods, both food and non-food items. A supermarket can range in size anywhere between 400 sq. m and 2,500 sq. m. Examples include Tesco, Dunnes, Asda, Sainsbury’s and SuperValu.

Discounters – Discounters (sometimes referred to as hard discounters) are retailers that subscribe to the ‘stack it high, sell it cheap’ mentality. Lidl and Aldi are the two leading examples of these discount retailers, which target price-conscious consumers.

Convenience store – A convenience store (also called a c-store or symbol group retailer) tends to be smaller in size, is traditionally open for longer hours and typically sells staple groceries and snacks, although it also stocks a range of non-food items. Many petrol stations also supplement their operations with the offer of convenience stores. Prices are typically higher than those in a larger supermarket.

This Report also looks at grocery preferences in terms of own-label and branded items. They are defined as the following:

Own-label – A retailer own-brand is a product or service that carries either the brand of the retailer or a sub-brand name that is controlled by the retailer. Own-brand products can be supplied by firms that specialise in own-brand products but also by those that are supplying branded products. In some cases, own-labels or own-brands are sometimes referred to as ‘private labels’, with typical examples being generic grocery items simply labelled with the grocery retailer’s branding.

Branded – Branded is a type of product manufactured with a trademark or distinctive name identifying a particular company.

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