Tesco boss Ken Murphy said the supermarket made switching gains from “virtually every part of the industry” in the run up to Christmas.
The chief executive reported the grocery giant witnessed shoppers switching “from discounters, from premium retailers [and] from other full line grocers”.
“We’ve had switching gains across the board, so we were really pleased with the performance because it was the breadth of it that we felt really good about,” he said.
The comments came as Tesco hailed its “biggest ever” Christmas, as it achieved its highest market share since 2016 driven by its investment into value, quality and service.
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“We had a very, very strong value proposition this Christmas and it really helped, because we did notice that customers were spreading their spend probably more than they have in previous years,” said Murphy.
The retailer saw a 2.8% boost in group like-for-like sales in the 13 weeks to 23 November and a 3.8% rise in the six weeks to 4 January. Over the festive period, UK LFLs jumped 4.1% driven by volume growth.
Murphy noted fresh food sales were up 6%, which he said could indicate that “maybe people had quite a healthy Christmas in some ways”.
He added that the business sold over 2.8 million bottles of Baileys, 2 million whole turkeys, while meat joint sales increased 10% and cheese sales were up 5%.
The grocery boss said Tesco Finest “continues to be a valued brand for customers” as 20 million customers shopped the range during the period. Sales of the premium line surged 15.5%.
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