Customers are deserting supermarket giant Tesco, the nation’s biggest retailer.
It appears they are turning instead to the German discount outlets Aldi and Lidl, where sales grew by 36% and 23% respectively.
Sales at Waitrose rose by 6% with Sainsbury’s and Asda also gaining.
Although it remains Britain’s largest retailer, Tesco reported its largest drop in sales in some 40 years. The loss could be as high as 1 million shoppers every week.
Figures released this week show that Morrisons was also losing customers, possibly as many as 800,000 a week.
Both Tesco and Morrison suffered the losses despite having made huge capital investments. Both were well-known for rapidly expanding their out-of-town outlets in much of the UK.
Now, in addition to investing £200m into cutting prices, Tesco plans to revamp 650 of its stores this year.
Tesco also said it should have quicker in changing its focus from expanding supermarkets and into convenience stores, but noted that it is “more competitive on price than we have been for a long time”.
