Fair's fair

“We’ve all got rather used to supermarket price wars. But there’s a new fight we’re going to pick.”

That’s what Sainsbury’s commercial director Mike Coupe wrote this morning as the supermarket revealed it was taking Tesco’s Price Promise to a Judicial Review.

The move – the first for Sainsbury’s outside property matters – follows a summer in which Sainsbury’s attempts to derail Tesco’s price-matching scheme failed not once, but twice.

First the Advertising Standards Authority rejected Sainsbury’s complaint that a regional press ad for Price Promise was misleading, and then its appeal to the ASA’s independent reviewer was also thrown out.

“We haven’t succeeded so far but we’re not giving up,” Coupe blogged.

Why? Because Coupe says the issue is “one that’s absolutely fundamental to the way we want to do business, and to what consumers have the right to know about the food they buy. It’s an argument about the value of values”.

He claims Tesco’s Price Promise does not make fair comparisons against own-label products.

“Is it right to say you’re comparing bananas with bananas when one is Fairtrade and the other isn’t? Is selling bottled mains water the same as selling water from a mineral-rich Yorkshire spring? Is British-sourced ham the same as ham from some unspecified country in the EU?” he says.

In an escalating spat, Tesco says it is.

“Tesco Price Promise offers customers reassurance on the price of their whole shop, in store and online, not just the big brand products,” says marketing director David Wood.

“When family budgets are under pressure, that is the kind of help customers want and the real question for Sainsbury’s is why they aren’t trying to do the same for their customers.”

Sainsbury’s, however, is convinced that customers do care about values. It released the results of a survey today which found 86% of shoppers thought retailers “should clearly state whether they take ethical production standards into consideration when matching prices”.

It’s now asking shoppers to share their opinions on Twitter using the hashtag #valueofvalues.

So with a fancy catchphrase, a survey and its own hashtag, is Sainsbury’s latest legal move fighting for a genuine level playing field in price comparison schemes or is it just a clever marketing ploy to promote the quality of its own-label lines?

Whatever the case, it’s certainly got people talking.