Nielsen publishes its Grocery Shop Directory annually. It measures the grocery trade market as a whole, covering the sales of physical and online stores selling groceries.
“K Group was the only operator in the Finnish grocery trade to increase its market share last year. The strong growth was attributable to our efforts towards producing an excellent customer experience, an objective that is at the core of everything we do. Again, K-food retailers played a key role in modernising Finnish grocery trade offering last year, making K Group even more distinctly a pioneer in the trading sector,” says Ari Akseli, President of K Group’s grocery trade division.
According to Nielsen’s Grocery Shop Directory, sales growth in K-Citymarkets and K-Supermarkets clearly outpaced the grocery trade market average: in the K-Citymarket chain, sales grew by 5.1%, meaning its market share grew the most out of all Finnish grocery store chains.
“Our remodelled stores and store-specific business ideas – meaning tailoring the selection and services of each K-store based on customer data and the retailer’s customer understanding – have proven an effective combination. One example of this is K-Citymarket Järvenpää winning the prestigious international recognition of Store of the Year 2019 at the IGD Awards last autumn, thus making it the best food store in the world. Customer satisfaction increased in all K-food store chains, as it has for several years now,” says Akseli.
Strong growth in online grocery sales – K Group’s online sales up by 106%
According to Nielsen’s data, online sales of groceries grew by 56.7% in Finland, totalling nearly €110 million*.
“In K Group, online grocery sales grew by a whopping 106%. More than 250 K-food stores now offer online sales. Online customer numbers have doubled and customer satisfaction is very high,” notes Akseli.
“First and foremost, we thank our customers for the growth in 2019. Improved customer satisfaction in both our physical and online stores clearly shows that we are focusing on the right things. We are heading in the right direction, and will continue our efforts to serve our customers even better every day,” says Akseli.
K-food store numbers on 1 January 2020 according to Nielsen (comparison figures for 1 Jan. 2019)
* According to Nielsen, the figure includes both the sales of Finnish online only operators as well as those of online stores linked to physical stores.
NB. Due to the inclusion of new markets in 2016, the 2017 and 2018 Nielsen market share figures are not comparable with the previous years’ figures.
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