Asda was the leading supermarket retailer of entertainment products in the first quarter of this year, following a slump in Tesco’s market share.
According to new figures from Kantar Worldpanel, Tesco’s share of the video, music and games market crashed from 11.3% in the first three months of 2011 to 9% in the same period this year.
The decline was primarily a result of Tesco pulling away from deep discounts on new entertainment launches – particularly movies – in the first quarter of this year, Kantar consumer research manager Craig Armer said.
In its annual results, Tesco admitted like-for-like sales of general merchandise, clothing and electrical goods were down 3.8% year-on-year.
Asda’s entertainment share grew 0.5 points to 9.3% year-on-year in the first quarter, putting it in third place in the chart of the UK’s biggest entertainment retailers behind Amazon with 19.9% of the market and HMV on 19.2%.
Sainsbury’s share rose 1.1 points to 4.9%, while Morrisons’ rose 0.2 points to 3.3%. Amazon was the top performer over the period, up 2.7 points compared with the same period last year, while iTunes rose 2.3 points.
“Now in the top five entertainment retailers, iTunes has seen a 2.3% rise on last year,” Armer said. “Digital music is becoming more favoured among consumers and iTunes continues to dominate the digital market despite increased competition from Amazon.”
He added: “Its position was strengthened this quarter with strong sales of Lana Del Ray album Born To Die (pictured), while Adele’s 21 also saw another boost in sales following her recent success at the Brits.”
It was too early for the figures to reflect the impact of the loss of 277 Game and Gamestation stores, Kantar said, but a one-point slump in Game’s share to 5.8% might have been a result of publishers refusing to supply Game Group with key titles earlier this year.
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