By Amy Hayes
New research by Roy Morgan is suggesting consumers are spreading their alcohol spend further with an increase investment within independent outlets.
While Woolworths still holds significant ground within the alcohol retail market, the recently released Roy Morgan Alcohol Retail Currency Report suggests that consumers have been more receptive to drivers such as proximity to other shops, low prices, an easily browseable range, special offers, expert staff knowledge and good service attributed to independent retailers.
According to the research, supermarkets still dominate the retail alcohol market with 72.9 per cent of this $15.4bn market however, over the last 12 months their share has fallen from 74.7 per cent.
During the same period, the share going to independent retailers has increased from 9.8 per cent to 12.9 per cent, representing a gain of over 130,000 customers compared to gain of only 25,000 for supermarkets.
Commenting on the findings, Norman Morris, Industry Communications Director, Roy Morgan said: “Competition in the retail alcohol market remains strong, led by a dominant Woolworths Group still holding nearly half the market (48.3 per cent) but over the last year they have lost 2.2 per cent points.
“While their recently listed competitor, the Coles Group gained 1.6 percentage points in market share (to 18.1 per cent). While the big two supermarket chains are competing, it appears to be largely at the expense of Aldi, IGA and other supermarkets all of whom lost share over the last 12 months,” he said.
It was also found that while independent retailers where seeing increases, hotel bottle shops where seeing declines over the same period.
“Despite the dominance of the supermarkets, the independent retailers have shown a market share gain of 3.1 percentage points (to 12.9 per cent) over the last year and are now ahead of hotel bottle shops which have fallen by 1.8 percentage points to 9.2 per cent” Morris added.
The Roy Morgan Alcohol Retail Currency Report is based upon the Roy Morgan Single Source conducting face-to-face interviews over the space of 12 months in participants’ homes. Of the 50,000 consumers interviewed, over 7000 where purchasers of packaged alcohol.
The large participant group has afforded Roy Morgan the ability to track long term trends within the market addressing market size and share (in dollars), customer numbers and cross visitation, as well as looking in-depth at major supermarket retailers.