The supermarket sector in Morocco has experienced, since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, an acceleration of its digitalization process, according to a study by the Sunergia group.
“The various brands have shown good management despite the health crisis with the launch of several mobile applications, the arrival of new partnerships or the introduction of self-service checkouts,” says Sunergia in its study entitled: ” Top of mind 2021: reputation of large-scale retailers in Morocco ”.
The group specializing in market research, marketing and opinion polls in Morocco and Africa has, in addition, indicated that the number of supermarket chains in Morocco has doubled between 2014 and 2020, adding that the large and medium-sized supermarkets, supermarkets and hypermarkets, represent 20% of the sector’s market share in 2020 against 12% in 2014.
In addition, the study shows that the mass distribution players in Morocco have not experienced any significant evolution in terms of market share this year, noting that the brand Marjane, with a slight increase of 0.8 points, is the leading player in mass distribution in the Kingdom, with 45.4% market share.
In second position comes LabelVie with a share of 29.6%, a drop of 0.5 points compared to 2019, while Asswak Assalam has not seen any change, still with 8.3% market share.
On the other hand, “BIM continues its momentum, after having experienced substantial growth in 2019 and reiterates its progression to the tune of 1 point in 2020”, underlines the same source.
And to note that “the strategy of BIM consisting in the opening of a maximum of stores to reach profitability strongly influences these results based on the sales surfaces in square meters and in no case on the performances of the actors of the sector” .
In terms of notoriety, the study, carried out on the basis of a representative sample of 1,017 people questioned from January 20 to March 21, 2021, shows that the Marjane group, with its two brands Marjane and Marjane Market, is the first in the ranking with 68% of citations, followed by Marjane Market (ex-Acima) with 4% of citations.
The difference is very important with the second in the ranking, in this case the LabelVie group (Carrefour, Carrefour Market and Atacadao), which obtains 19% of the responses, notes the same source, noting that the reputation of the first rank for the Marjane brand is thus more than 3 times superior to that of Carrefour.
As for BIM and Aswak Assalam, they are at the bottom of the ranking and are cited respectively by only 7% and 6% of the population, adds Sunergia.
According to this study, Marjane “probably owes a large part of its notoriety to its seniority as well as to its network of points of sale with more than 45% of sales areas in m2 and more than 120 stores spread over more than 27 cities of the Kingdom ”, noting that communication is also a key factor in the development of notoriety.
“Marjane never stops trying and multiplies communication campaigns. On social networks, Marjane does not hesitate to collaborate with Moroccan influencers… In addition, Marjane regularly giveaways products to her followers on social networks ”, underlines the same source.
And to specify that the results are not equal in the different regions of the Kingdom, insofar as Marjane is more cited by the inhabitants of the Oriental, up to 91%, which could be explained by the presence of Marjane in the three main cities of the region (Nador, Berkane and Oujda) but also by the limited network of competitors.
The same observation could be made in the Fès-Meknes region where the Marjane group has been present since 2001 with 5 hypermarkets (72% of responses).
This study, which is based on the concept of Top-Of-Mind Awareness, makes it possible to assess brand awareness by focusing on the first brand cited or first-rank awareness.
.