Sainsbury’s has come out on top during the Christmas period, being the only supermarket out of the big four to increase its market share.

Kantar Worldpanel has revealed the latest grocery market share figures today (8 January) for the 12 weeks ending 23 December 2012, highlighting a flat growth level of 3.2% for the overall market.

Tesco continued to dominate with a market share of 30.5%, but this dropped 0.1% on last year’s figure for the 12 weeks to 25 December 2011.

Sainsbury’s was the only supermarket among the top four to increase its market share, rising 0.1% to 17.1%. Both Asda and Morrisons saw drops in market share for the 12-week period of 0.2% and 0.4% respectively.

Edward Garner, director at Kantar Worldpanel, said: “Among the big four supermarkets Sainsbury’s is, once again, the only retailer to increase its share compared with last year. Tesco’s share has dipped slightly, however this is an improvement on the performance seen throughout 2012, when the average share drop was 0.4%, suggesting that festive shoppers gave the retailer a welcome boost in the run-up to Christmas.

“The well-publicised under-performance of Morrisons continues, and it is the only one of the big four supermarket to lose sales compared with last year. This highlights its need to address the lack of convenience outlets and an online offering in 2013, as already clearly identified by the retailer.”

He added that “two nations” continued to feature heavily in the grocery market, as 47% of shoppers reduced their spend in the lead-up to Christmas, but 48% increased it at 4.5% - the same rate of inflation for the period.

Discounters continued to perform well in the 12 weeks, with Aldi experiencing a 0.6% rise to 3.2% and Lidl increasing its share by 0.2% to 2.8%.