It’s blink murder out there among buyers. An inflation standoff with rivals to see who blinks first on key value items. No one wants to go first for fear of losing face – but once an opposite number moves they can relax. Well, almost relax, because even if one or two rivals move up in price, as we’ve seen, there’s always another steadfast rival.
It’s no time to be learning on the job. And yet for many buyers, this is their first experience of managing cost price increases on this scale. And they’re doing so against a backdrop of supply shortages too.
A staring competition with Aldi is particularly tricky. As its appearance in this week’s Grocer 33 shows, there’s lots of horse trading and jockeying for position in the numbers, as buyers try to keep up their end of the Aldi Price Match promise while fending off suppliers of those lines who want a cost price increase. It’s impossible to move in unison, for competition reasons.
But if you blink you undermine a price promise. What are your options? Keep staring? Or go higher on a non-competing line? It’s an impossible position. Indeed, despite a basket 3.9% lower year on year, matching Aldi on seven lines and being cheaper on four, Sainsbury’s is £6.17 more expensive. And that’s while Aldi’s annual inflation on the same lines is up 2.5%.
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