By offering a wide variety of items such as food, beverages, health products and more, supermarkets have managed to remain relatively stable in terms of store performance during the last year, experts suggest. Coming off of a period of stagnant growth from 2008 to 2011, supermarkets now seem to be on the upswing with 2.5 percent growth in retail sales in 2012, says Jonas Feliciano, beverage analyst at Chicago-based Euromonitor International. In fact, supermarkets are outperforming other retail channels in terms of grocery sales, says Susan Viamari, editor of Times & Trends for Chicago-based SymphonyIRI Group.
“For example, across all [consumer packaged goods] (CPG) outlets, [shopper] frequency slipped 1 percent last year, and frequency within the grocery channel slipped a half of a percent, so it’s better than the industry average,” Viamari says. “Likewise, the industry average basket [sales] grew a half of a percent; in groceries, basket [sales] grew 2.6 percent.” Some of this growth is due to price increases, she notes.