Grocery inflation hit an all-time high of 15.4% in Ireland in 2022 while shoppers spent a record €1.3 billion on festive shopping baskets in December, latest figures show.
Market research organisation, Kantar, found that shoppers stocked up on both festive treats and cold and flu products in the four weeks leading up to Christmas Day – spending an extra €119 million in 2022, compared to what they would have spent in 2021.
Its latest research shows that the first Christmas without Covid-19 restrictions since 2019 heavily influenced shopping patterns, with 25,000 more households gathering around a whole turkey rather than the rolled turkeys, which featured heavily in 2020 and 2021.
Kantar’s figures also highlight that sales of “festive treats or niceties such as chocolate, cheese and paté” rose by 9.9%, while mince pie sales rose by 15.5%”.
Grocery shopping baskets
During December, shoppers added an additional €828,000 worth of cold treatments to their grocery shopping baskets and €547,000 worth of vitamins and picked an additional €6.8 million worth of household and cleaning products.
There was also an additional €13.3 million year-on-year spent on wine in the four weeks leading up to December 25.
Although sales rose by 6.7% over the four weeks, under review, the key driver behind the jump in spending was grocery price inflation rather than volumes.
According to Kantar while all retailers benefited from festive shopping sprees across the country it was Dunnes that remained top of the Christmas tree when it came to claiming the highest share of the market over the 12 weeks up to Christmas Day at 23.7%.
Similarly, Tesco held 23%, Supervalu 21% Lidl had 12.2% and Aldi 11.6%.
Emer Healy, senior retail analyst at Kantar, said Christmas was “certainly different this year”, adding:
“Even though 46.5% of buyers claimed they would spend less than previous years, the cost-of-living crisis didn’t stop Irish families from looking for ways to keep spirits high, with the average shopper spending €58 more on groceries during December than they did last year.”
Kantar’s research shows that the busiest shopping day of the year in 2022 was December 23, when tills rang up a total €94.4 million – €8.6 million more than the busiest trading day in 2021.
But the latest report also highlights the impact of grocery inflation on shoppers’ baskets. It jumped to 15.4% in Ireland for the 12-week period ending December 25, 2022, which was the highest level on record and ahead of the UK level which stood at 14.2%.