said roman heini aldis uk group managing director in september last year they had become used to thinking you have to pay more for better products weve shown them this doesnt have to be the case aldi and lidls growth trajectories are insane aldi sales rocketed 193 in the 12 weeks ending march 1 2015 compared with a year ago that was the slowest rate of growth since june 2011 it still managed to rack up 5 market share from 26 the year before lidl which is a privately owned company based in germany and therefore does not have to reported its earnings in the same way as a public company also posted growth of 136 ocado on march 10 this year ocado the food equivalent of amazon reported a 19 jump in gross group sales for the 12 weeks to february 22 2015 compared to a year ago physical stores are a drain on an already weak balance sheet in other words the new players are growing the traditional british chains that once anchored every high street are shrinking for some of them even being a supermarket is a liability its hard to see a way out for morrisons the minnow of the supermarket group as more and more people are preferring to do the weekly shop online making physical stores more of a drain on an already weak balance sheet said augustin eden a research analyst at accendo markets now look at britains largest supermarket tesco despite the tesco recording its best performance in 18 months in the 12 weeks leading to 1 march sales were only up 11 this period included the christmas and new year related discounts supermarkets have to get used to this new normal of low profit margins and must adapt accordingly the discount retailers like aldi and lidl have fundamentally disrupted the market and the big four tesco morrisons asda and sainsburys must accept their losing market share said professor heiner evanschitzky professor and chair of marketing at aston business school the best option for them now is to shrink their businesses gracefully he says please enable javascript to watch this video business insider published on mar 13 2015 at 0449 pm ist telegram facebook copy link be the first one to comment comment now comments comment now read comment 1 all comments post post find this comment offensive choose your reason below and click on the submit button this will alert our moderators to take actions reasons for reporting foul language defamatory inciting hatred against a certain community out of context spam others report join the community of 2m industry professionals subscribe to our newsletter to get latest insights analysis download etretail app get realtime updates save your favourite articles scan to download app international supermarket tesco asda sainsburys marrisons homenewseverything that british supermarkets thought was true has turned out to be wrong