Elsewhere, Waitrose and the Co-operative saw sales rise by 2.7% and 1.5% respectively.
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Sales at Asda have now fallen for five quarters in a row, making it the worst-performer among the established United Kingdom supermarkets.
Grocery share figures from retail analysts Kantar Worldpanel for the 12 weeks ending 8 November 2015 show that Lidl’s market share reached a new record high of 4.4 per cent, increasing by 0.7 percentage points on a year ago thanks to a sales growth of 19 per cent, while Aldi grew sales by 16.5 per cent, keeping its market share at 5.6 per cent for the fifth consecutive month.
All of Britain’s big four supermarkets – market leader Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons – have been hurt by a price war, waged to try to stem the loss of shoppers to discounters as well as the the impact of commodity-led deflation.
Aldi and Lidl’s average sales basket also increase and is outpacing that of other supermarket retailers. Sainsbury’s, which has shown the most resilience to the discounters, lifted sales by 1.5 percent over the 12 weeks and its market share by 0.2 percentage points to 16.6 percent, regaining its status from Asda as Britain’s No. 2 grocer and sending its shares up 1.8 percent. “The food-focused retailer traditionally increases its market share over Christmas, so we can expect to see it keep hold of second place for the time being”, says McKevitt.
Last month, Walmart-owned Asda launched “Project Renewal”, with which the retail will seek to drive long-term, sustainable growth by simplifying its offering and refreshing larger stores.
“I’m confident that by reinforcing our offer we can further extend our price advantage over major competitors and close the gap against the limited assortment discounters – not only on price, but across range, service and quality”.
Lidl will continue their price cut system in all products in their store to lure in more consumers. Sainsbury Chife Executive Mike Coupe said that they where giving more importance to small convenience shops than large-scale stores. The supermarket has also curbed its London store roll-out in favour of focusing on 95 of its larger stores.
Mr Clarke said: “There’s no doubt this represents another challenging quarter”.
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“It is a slow and costly process to reconfigure any business to meet fundamental challenges on this scale, but I’m clear that only businesses which are well positioned, financially strong and able to efficiently deliver what their customers want can be successful in this environment”, he adds.
