Japan’s Supermarket Sales Down for 18th Consecutive Month

July 24, 2007
By Ken Worsley

On the heels of last week’s strong supermarket sales data, we still have not such good news coming from the supermarket sector. In June, supermarket sales across Japan were down 1.5% year on year, showing a fall for the 18th consecutive month, and now for 39 of the last 40 months.

This month’s data covered 8,645 shops owned by 79 companies employing 446,515 workers - 129,599 full time and 316,916 part time. Interestingly, while 31.5% of the full-timers were women, that group made up 90.87% of the part-time work force.

Broken down by category, May 2007 supermarket sales looked like this:

Food: -1.1%, 60.1% of total revenue
Household Products: -2.9%, 19.8% of total revenue
Clothing: -1.8%, 13.6% of total revenue
Miscellaneous Items: No change, 6.1% of total revenue
Services: -1.6%, 0.4% of total revenue

Don’t forget: This Friday we’ll be seeing the most recent retail spending data from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and next Tuesday we will see the June household spending data.

Filed Under Retail, Supermarkets