Supermarkets: January sales dropped by 3.4%

The “Elpida” severe weather front but also reduced demand, especially in the first 15 days of the year, “froze” supermarket sales in January.

According to the latest NielsenIQ measurements, sales in value at organized food retail in January this year showed a negative trend at -3.4%, compared to January 2021.

More specifically, the turnover was just under 704 million euros compared to almost 729 million euros in the corresponding month last year.

However, according to , one should not overlook the fact that at the time of the comparison the conditions of the wider market were quite different, as the lockdown regime prevailed, at which time the in-house consumption was particularly high.

However, comparing the turnover of retail with two years back, when normal, pre-covid conditions prevailed in the market, this year’s turnover in January is significantly increased, by + 11.2%, compared to that of 2020.

The course per week

Examining in more detail the trends per week, the first of the year presented the most negative trend, at -12.4%, however we should take into account that on January 3 there were some chains that were closed, due to inventory reckoning.

The growth rate of the second week was negative, although much more restrained, at -1.8%, while in the third week there was a recovery and a positive trend compared to the corresponding last year, at + 2.7%.

Regarding the last week of the month, the bad weather, as well as the operation and feedback problems of many stores resulted in a negative trend of -2.3%, with Attica contributing half to this negative growth rate.

Attica “halted”

Especially for Attica and through the analysis of the daily sales data that NielsenIQ has for specific retailers, in combination with the weather facts, which it has included in its databases, it is worth commenting on the fact that in the last week of January, due to of the snowfall and the big drop of the average temperature, differences in the dynamics (gravity) of the days were observed.

In particular, while in the previous weeks of January, Tuesday averaged 14% of weekly sales, on the last Tuesday of January its contribution fell to 9%, as apparently buyers avoided travel on days of heavy snowfall.

The same analysis of the daily data showed that the total weight of Friday and Saturday in the last week of the month increased from 42% which was the average of the previous weeks to 49%, when the situation had started to normalize a bit. with the snow and the difficulties of operation of the stores, but also of the difficulty of moving the buyers.