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Tesco now second biggest entertainment retailer as HMV slips

By | Published on Wednesday 10 July 2013

Tesco

Despite the flurry to support the flagging music chain when it hit the wall at the start of the year, and the bigger-than-expected streamlined network of stores that Hilco bought out of administration in April, HMV has still slipped to become the fifth biggest entertainment retailer in the UK, having previously been second, and not so long ago at the top of the pile.

According to the latest figures from Kantar Worldpanel, Amazon benefited the most from the downsizing of the HMV store network, increasing its market share to 23.4% in the last quarter, matching its previous record from last year’s Christmas quarter.

HMV’s slide allows Tesco to become the second biggest entertainment product seller (though that’s more to do with its DVD sales than music), while Sainsbury’s also saw a 2.4% rise in its market share after HMV’s slip, even though it still sits just below the entertainment specialist overall.

Meanwhile, and despite continued claims that the download market is wobbling as streaming services boom, a 12.5% increase in digital music sales in the last year has helped the iTunes store also achieve a 2.4% increase in market share this last quarter, putting it in third place in the overall entertainment retailer chart.

Commenting on all this, Kantar’s Consumer Insight Director Fiona Keenan told CMU: “HMV’s recent store closures have hit the high street retailer hard, with its number of shoppers almost halving in the latest twelve weeks compared with the same quarter last year and its market share dropping by 8.4 percentage points”.

She went on: “Amazon has benefited the most from HMV’s decline, gaining across music, games and video. It made an additional £4.5 million in the second quarter of 2013 by welcoming former HMV customers and has returned to its record share of the entertainment market – 23.4%, a figure last seen at Christmas 2012. Sainsbury’s was the main grocer to win from HMV shoppers switching store, gaining an additional £2.3 million compared with this time last year”.

But, she added: “Tesco is now Britain’s second largest entertainment retailer with 13.2% of the market, boosted by its ongoing success selling big video releases. It took over a quarter of all spend on ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’, the biggest selling film in the second quarter of this year”.

On the continued rise of iTunes, Keenan concluded: “iTunes Music’s record share is testament to rising sales of digital music which have grown by 12.5% over the past year to make up 51.4% of all music. The growth of digital, boosted largely by invigorated digital album sales, has helped the total music market to grow slightly over the past year, despite continued declines in physical music”.



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