Amazon extends sales lead over HMV

Amazon has moved further ahead of HMV as the UK's top entertainment retailer, according to newly-released figures.

Amazon claimed 20.3% of the market, up from 16.9% a year ago, in statistics released by Kantar Worldpanel. These cover sales of videos, games and music (both physical and digital) for the 12 weeks to September 30 2012.

According to Kantar Worldpanel, Amazon performed well across all categories, but games sales specifically helped to drive growth.

HMV remained in second place with its year-on-year market share drop from 16.7% to 16.1% a smaller decline than in previous years recently. Kantar Worldpanel suggests this is down to its strong video performance, a category where it remains market leader.

Tesco continued in third position but its share fell sharply from 14.5% to 12.0%, while there were also declines for Asda in fourth spot (from 11.1% to 9.9%) and eighth-placed Morrisons (from 3.8% to 2.9%). The only supermarket to increase its share was Sainsbury's, growing from 4.6% to 6.6% to finish sixth.

The growing digital music market helped improve iTunes' standing as it ranked fifth with 9.1%, up from 6.3% a year ago, while Play fell from 3.5% to 3.0% and Game Group from 8.1% to 5.5%.

Kantar Worldpanel's consumer insight director Fiona Keenan said: “Sainsbury’s success in the entertainment market is partly down to consumers switching their spend from other retailers, in particular from HMV and Game. However, it has also managed to encourage existing shoppers to spend more – those customers who purchased entertainment products from Sainsbury’s in quarter three last year spent an extra £4m on videos, games and music in the same quarter this year.

“Sainsbury’s will also be benefitting from increased footfall with the number of times shoppers visit its stores growing by 2.6% year-on-year over the same 12 week period.  As 51% of the retailer’s entertainment sales come from impulse purchases, having shoppers in its stores more often will naturally lead to growth in non-food categories, too.”

Kantar Worldpanel Entertainment is billed as the leading provider of continuous consumer panel research, covering the film, music and games purchases of 15,000 demograpically representative individuals in the UK.