Panorama’s price match probe is misleading tosh

The Netflix drama about Newsnight’s interview with Prince Andrew – Scoop – was a ratings winner. But it’s unlikely the latest Panorama episode will see any TV and movie moguls battling it out for rights.

Granted, supermarket discounts are hardly as salacious as the Prince and his Jeffrey Epstein connections. There’s another key flaw, though: even the most desperate of studios would likely stop short of giving credence to the lightweight findings on air last night.

It’s a sad sign of the times that this once world-leading investigative programme has, along with other institutions such as Newsnight, had its budget and subsequent quality of journalism slashed to such an extent that this is the best it has to offer.

Supermarket deals: How good are they? set out to explore if the deals available in the big four were really as good as the ones on offer in German discounters Aldi and Lidl.

Customers are ‘losers’

Presenter Michelle Ackerley spent the first five minutes clearly aghast at the fact Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Morrisons didn’t always sell tomahawk-sized steaks and thumping great lumps of fresh prime cod at a cut price. What’s more, they were cleverly disguising this fact with artful packaging.

The suggestion was that customers were far too stupid to realise Sainsbury’s £5 steaks weren’t on the same level as a trip to Gaucho.

The programme even referred to customers as “losers”. We can only assume the term referred to shoppers supposedly losing out. But it could be taken less favourably: the presenters clearly felt customers were so dim they couldn’t understand weight specifications, or see for their own eyes that if they were looking for high-end restaurant fare, they were being stitched up like (very small) kippers.

The crux of the programme focused on the supermarket price match efforts with Aldi and Lidl. We “learnt” these deals were driven by supermarkets needing to appeal to people who are still suffering the effects of the cost of living crisis, yet want access to good-value food.

To test the rigour of those deals, it tasked two average families with trying to compare the prices and quality of 40 products at mainstream supermarkets with those at Aldi.

Far be it from The Grocer, which knows a thing or two about mystery shoppers, to question the thoroughness of the research – but the fact that the first family only managed to find around 20 Aldi price-matched items in a Morrisons superstore suggested a flaw. The programme then expressed shock that fewer than 300 Morrisons products were price-matched – conveniently forgetting, or rather not knowing at all, that the supermarket didn’t even launch its campaign until February.

An expert from Which? accused supermarkets of using “psychological tricks” to con shoppers. They went on to claim customers would expect Morrisons – and other supermarkets – to price match the discounters on all items. Which would not only negate the term ‘discounters’, but would also be a tricky feat, considering Aldi doesn’t actually sell anything like the tens of thousands of products stocked by the major mults.

The end result was that a shop at Morrisons came in around a fiver more expensive than Aldi – which, if anything, seems rather reasonable.

Tesco portrayed as villain

But attention then switched to another family sent to Tesco. There, they found it easier to locate the price-matched items – perhaps because there are almost twice as many of them, and Tesco has been doing this for years.

Tesco still managed to be portrayed as the chief villain in the piece, however. Particular criticism was reserved for its “not so” Hearty Food Co chicken nugget, which the Beeb found contained 39% chicken, while Aldi’s Rooster chicken nuggets contained 60%.

“The same price, definitely not the same quality” as Aldi, concluded Ackerley, declining to mention the fact this is one of Tesco’s entry-level “farm products”. Perhaps someone ought to call Jamie Oliver – except, of course, he’s now working with Tesco on its healthy eating range. 

Somehow the programme also managed to squeeze in criticism of brands for shrinking products including chocolate bars, bagels, biscuits and crisps – hopefully something Panorama remembers when its attention turns to the war on junk food.

The only one to come out well was Aldi, which seemingly could do little wrong. 

‘Misleading’ accusations

It’s tempting to dismiss the show as simply bad. But it’s also highly misleading. Panorama suggests supermarkets aren’t trying to help customers save money with loyalty cards, rather they are trying to persuade them to spend more than they otherwise would. 

It allowed Which? to accuse supermarkets of the ultimate crime of trying to get customers to spend as much money as possible in their stores. It’s the same line it gave as evidence to the CMA inquiry into loyalty cards, which ended up finding absolutely no evidence to pin on the retailers.

The competition watchdog doesn’t get a look in, of course, despite its two recent probes. But one thing is for sure: they won’t be launching a third on the back of this tosh.

As one supermarket source says: “It was remarkable such a lightweight and misleading programme went out under the Panorama brand.”

Of course, there are elements of truth in that 30 minutes of life you won’t get back, but not a single element of new information. And the overriding assumption that British customers are all so thick they can’t make their own decisions about what is and what isn’t good value is not just patronising, it’s pathetic.