Kantar’s latest figures on the Irish grocery market shows that in the 12 weeks to 29 October, grocery inflation slowed to 9.8%, the first single-digit reading this year.

While noting that the reading is still high, business director at Kantar Emer Healy said they expect it to continue to decline over the coming months.

Kantar’s grocery inflation reading is calculated on a basket of 30,000 products, with consumer shopping behaviour held constant from year to year.

This means that it assumes no change in consumer behaviour due to increased prices, which in turn means that individual consumers may be experiencing lower grocery inflation themselves if they change their own behaviour.

Trade down

The easiest way for a consumer to reduce their personal inflation rate is to trade down the value chain when shopping.

There is strong evidence from Katar data that this is happening, with own-label value brands currently holding a market share of 47.5%.

Of the major multiples in Ireland, Dunnes continues to hold top spot with 23.7% of the market. Tesco is second on 22.5%, with Supervalu at 20.6%. Lidl and Aldi are at 13.5% and 12.1% respectively.