Supermarket sales growth slowed over the past 12 weeks, new data by Kantar revealed on Tuesday.
Indeed, year-on-year supermarket sales grew by merely 0.5% as political uncertainty surrounding the upcoming general election weighed on shoppers, Kantar said.
Indeed, with Brexit delayed yet again, parties now campaign to win votes ahead of Thursday’s general election.
Kantar added that shoppers seem to be delaying their preparations for Christmas following a dull Black Friday shopping period and wet autumn.
The data shows that shoppers have made on average one less visit to the shops over the quarter compared to the same period a year prior.
“We’re yet to see consumers ramp up their spending in the run up to Christmas and, as anticipated, Black Friday only brought a limited boost for the grocers,” Kantar said in its report.
“The number of people claiming to take advantage of Black Friday this year fell to 53% from 57% in 2018, with signs of ‘promotion fatigue’ among consumers, an increased scepticism regarding the value of the deals on offer, and some retailers pulling back from the day all together.”
Kantar’s data revealed that Christmas puddings and seasonal biscuit sales were down 16% and 12% over the past four weeks, compared to the same period the year prior.
Tesco (LON:TSCO) performed best out of the larger supermarkets over the period. It recently began to offer a subscription customer loyalty scheme, though Kantar said that it is too soon to determine whether Clubcard Plus has had an impact, and sales dropped by 0.8%.
Meanwhile, sales at Sainsbury’s (LON:SBRY) declined by 1.1%, at Asda (NYSE:WMT) by 1.9% and at Morrisons (LON:MRW) by 2.9%.