Aldi has begun promoting weekly rounds of ‘price drops’ on scores of products.
More than 80 products were dropped in price this week, in a promotion supported by Hotmail ads.
The initiative is an extension of the discounter’s ‘prices hammered’ campaign – its fightback against the price matching schemes of the traditional big four. The campaign launched last month with an MC Hammer-style Aldi TV ad telling viewers “You can’t match this”.
However, it is thought no particular retailer is being targeted, with Aldi’s list of reductions appearing to steer clear of products currently featured in rivals’ price matching schemes.
Despite being billed on an Aldi web page as “this week’s price drops”, it is also understood the reductions are not temporary in weekly cycles, but accumulative, as the supermarket works to cut more prices than ever in 2024. Aldi has said it will invest a record £380m-plus in reducing prices throughout the year. The price drop promotion is a way of highlighting the increased activity by wrapping it up in the ‘prices hammered’ campaign.
The reduced products are predominantly own label and span a range of categories from food cupboard and chilled to household and toiletries.
Some of this week’s bigger savings include a bottle of Specially Selected Le Bourgeron Chardonnay at £6.69 instead of £7.69, 60 Mamia Newborn Nappies at £1.99 instead of £2.25 and a 10-pack of Specially Selected Ristretto Coffee Pods at £1.45 instead of £1.79.
Many of the smaller reductions are by 4p, such as Bramwells Corned Beef (340g) at £2.05 instead of £2.09, Fishmonger Cooked Scottish Mussels with White Wine at £1.95 instead of £1.99, and Worldwide Foods Long Grain Rice (300g) at £1.05 instead of £1.09.
“I don’t recognise any of the featured items as being in any of the price match schemes,” said Paul Stainton, UK partner at private label consultancy IPLC. “Aldi seems to have picked a random bunch of non-priced-matched SKUs.
“Some of the reductions are not that compelling,” he added.
Stainton also questioned the clarity of Aldi’s terms and conditions, which state: “Trolley loads of super low prices calculated on annualised basis using total sum of price reductions between 06.05.2024 - 03.06.2024 x weekly volume of products sold x 52.”
At the time of writing, Aldi had not provided clarification.
The Grocer revealed last week that Tesco had increased the number of products in its Aldi price match campaign by about 130 since the start of the year, to take the total to over 750 for the first time. Sainsbury’s had grown its campaign by over 100 products in the same period, to take its total to almost 600.
Asda and Morrisons started price matching earlier this year and their campaigns now extend to about 650 products between them.
Aldi’s year-on-year sales growth has slowed over the past nine months, from 17.1% in September 2023 to 2.2% in Kantar’s latest data [12 w/e 12 May 2024].
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