Irish consumers spent more than €500m less on groceries in the year ended 13 June than in the previous year.

New research from Kantar Worldpanel shows the value of the Irish grocery market value fell 5.7% to just under €8.78bn during that time. However, the decline in the value of sales is slowing on the back of Tesco's price cuts as shoppers in the Republic are now less likely to travel to Enniskillen and Newry to do their shopping.

The influence of Asda and Sainsbury's has slumped since Christmas, with 12.3% of households shopping there at some stage in the three months to 13 June, down from 20% in the run-up to Christmas last year. Their total market share almost halved to 1.7% during the same period.

Tesco, along with the German discounters, has been the big winner in the supermarket price wars, increasing its market share by 0.9% in the last year to 26.7%. Dunnes by contrast has seen its market share slip by 0.6% to 23.5% while Superquinn's share of the market was 6.8%, down from 7.2%.

Aldi and Lidl meanwhile have seen their share of the market increase by a full percentage point to 8.7%. Lidl, which celebrates its tenth anniversary in Ireland this week, had 5.5% of grocery sales with Aldi standing at 3.2%. Supervalu held firm at 20.1%.

The three months to 13 June proved particularly strong for Tesco and the discounters with their market share standing at 27.4% and 9.1% respectively during the period.

Kantar Worldpanel also found that inflation is now coming back into the sector with 10% of the grocery submarkets experiencing inflation compared with prices that were being charged at Christmas last year. In addition, some shoppers are now choosing more expensive products than last year, or at least buying more full-price products, but the consumer data specialists believe this is "largely a result of 'extreme' trading down this time last year". However more than one in five goods sold in supermarkets is now from a budget line.

Kantar Worldpanel monitors the take-home grocery-purchasing habits of 3,000 households throughout the country across more than 200 product categories.