Every loaf bought in town: Add up every loaf bought in the town in 2025: at the Brightmart supermarkets, at Goldcrust's bakery on Market Square, at Lena's three shops, at the small bakeries and corner shops. Together they come to $8,000,000.
That is the town's bread market. Lena's shops sold $960,000 of it.
The part of a market's sales that one business makes is its market share. It is written as a percentage, for one market, over one period, usually a year.
Market share = the business's sales ÷ total sales in the market × 100
Lena's share of the town's bread market, 2025
The business's sales
Lena's three shops sold $960,000 of bread.
The whole market's sales
Every business in the town together sold $8,000,000 of bread.
Divide, then multiply by 100
$960,000 ÷ $8,000,000 × 100 = 12%
Say what it means
Of every $100 spent on bread in the town, $12 is spent at Lena's.
| The town's bread market, 2025 | Sales ($) | Market share |
|---|---|---|
| Brightmart supermarkets | 3,600,000 | 3,600,000 ÷ 8,000,000 × 100 = 45% |
| Lena's Bakery Ltd | 960,000 | 12% |
| Goldcrust plc, Market Square | 880,000 | 11% |
| Other bakeries and shops | 2,560,000 | 32% |
| The whole market | 8,000,000 | 100% |
The biggest slice: The shares of every business in a market add up to 100%. The business with the largest share is the market leader: in the town's bread market that is Brightmart, with 45%.
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Kofi runs Lena's Market Square shop, where a loaf costs $3. A few doors away, Goldcrust sells its loaf for $2.20.
So which bakery has the bigger share? It depends on what you count.
By value (money)
- Count the money: the business's sales revenue
- Divide by the money spent in the whole market
- Dear products push the share up
By volume (units)
- Count the units sold: loaves, cars, tickets
- Divide by all the units sold in the market
- Cheap products push the share up
| The town's bread, 2025 | Lena's Bakery | Goldcrust, Market Square |
|---|---|---|
| Sales revenue | $960,000 | $880,000 |
| Share by value (of $8,000,000) | 12% | 11% |
| Loaves sold | 320,000 at $3 | 400,000 at $2.20 |
| Share by volume (of 3,200,000 loaves) | 10% | 12.5% |
Why the two shares differ: Lena's loaf costs more than the town's average loaf ($2.50), so her share by value is bigger than her share by volume. Goldcrust's cheaper loaf does the opposite.
A share can also be counted by customers: the percentage of all the market's customers who buy from the business.
Which market? Lena's $960,000 is 12% of the town's bread. Measured against all the bread sold in the country, $1,200 million, it is 0.08%.
Both sums are right. A share only means something next to the market it was measured in, so always say which market it is.
Use the total the question names: A question may give a business's sales, the total for its region and the total for the whole country, then ask for its share of the regional market. Divide by the regional total.
Dividing by the national total, or by the rivals' sales only, gives a different market's share.
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A bigger market than last year: In 2024 the town spent $7,500,000 on bread. In 2025 it spent $8,000,000. New homes on the Riverside estate brought more families, and more of them bought fresh bread.
The whole market got bigger, before anyone asks who sold it.
How fast a market's total sales change from one year to the next is its market growth. It is written as a percentage of last year's sales.
Market growth = (this year's market sales − last year's market sales) ÷ last year's market sales × 100
Growth of the town's bread market, 2024 to 2025
Find the change
$8,000,000 − $7,500,000 = $500,000 more spent on bread.
Divide by the earlier year
$500,000 ÷ $7,500,000 = 0.0667
Multiply by 100
0.0667 × 100 = 6.7% (6.67% to two places)
Say what it means
For every $100 the town spent on bread in 2024, it spent about $106.70 in 2025.
Growing: above 0%
- More customers, or customers buying more
- A business can sell more without taking a rival's customers
- New rivals are drawn in
Flat: about 0%
- The market sells about the same each year
- One business can grow only by winning customers from another
- Rivals fight harder over price and promotion
Shrinking: below 0%
- Fewer customers, or customers buying less
- Sales fall even for a business that keeps its share
- Some businesses leave the market
Three things to get right: Divide by the earlier year, not the later one. A fall gives a minus sign: a market that drops from $8,000,000 to $7,600,000 has grown by −5%.
Growth can be counted in money or in units: loaves sold, or the number of customers.
At lunchtime Lena's shops sell soup and filled rolls. The town's lunch-to-go market is growing fast: $2,000,000 in 2024, $2,500,000 in 2025. Crumbline plc, the sandwich chain, opened two shops in town that year.
Lena's lunch sales rose too. So did her share?
| The town's lunch-to-go market | 2024 | 2025 | Sales growth | Market share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The whole market | $2,000,000 | $2,500,000 | 25% | 100% |
| Lena's lunches | $136,000 | $160,000 | 17.6% | 6.8% → 6.4% |
| Crumbline plc | $300,000 | $750,000 | 150% | 15% → 30% |
Growing faster than the market: A business's share rises only when its sales grow faster than the market. Lena's lunch sales rose 17.6%, but the market rose 25%, so her share fell from 6.8% to 6.4%.
In bread it went the other way: her sales rose 14.3% ($840,000 to $960,000) while the market grew 6.7%, so her share rose from 11.2% to 12%.
What it shows
- How big she is next to her rivals, whatever the market's size
- Whether she is winning customers or losing them to rivals
- A clear target to aim for, such as 15% of the town's bread by 2027
What it does not show
- Profit: a share won with price cuts can earn less
- Why the share moved: a new rival, a price rise, a new estate
- A fair comparison if the market is defined differently each year
Rising sales are not a rising share: Lena's lunch sales went up and her share went down in the same year. Before you say a share rose or fell, compare the business's growth with the market's growth.
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How this comes up: Three short shapes. Define the term market share. State two ways in which market share can be measured. Calculate a business's market share from its sales and the market's total, showing your working.
The calculation often gives a regional total and a national total, and names one of them.
The calculation pattern
- Find the market. Underline the market the question names: the region, the town, the country.
- Write the formula in words. Business's sales ÷ total market sales × 100.
- Put the figures in. If the sales are given as units and a price, multiply them first.
- Answer with the % sign. Round to one or two decimal places, never cut the figure short.
- For a definition, say percentage of the total sales in a market made by one business.
The trap: the wrong total: Dividing by the national total when the question asks about the region, or by the rivals' sales instead of the whole market, gives the share of a different market.
A correct figure with no % sign loses a mark too.
Calculate Valley Grain's market share of the regional flour market in 2025 (show all your working).
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