Ronan Hegarty
It’s official: Asda is the UK’s cheapest supermarket for the seventh year running. But as our review of the past year shows, it was no walkover for the Wal-Mart subsidiary.
In three of the four quarters under review, Asda recorded the cheapest average price for a full basket of 33 items. But Tesco pushed it all the way. It was top for price in the third quarter, and recorded two of cheapest individual basket prices we have seen in the course of the past year.
This year we decided to change the contents of our basket every quarter, and our review reflects that move.
The fact that all the retailers reported their cheapest basket prices in the final quarter of the year is largely due to the fact we introduced a cheapest on display Australian red wine to our list. In the third quarter, our results were affected by what we dubbed the curse of the frozen pizza. Problems with the distribution of Goodfella’s Ciabatta frozen pizza meant price and availability data for the first four issues of 2004 has not been included in this review.
But our store visits during those four weeks did prove crucial in helping us decide who should win this year’s customer service award.
This takes into account criteria such as the cleanliness of the store, helpfulness of staff and ease of the shopping experience.
Based on the number of stores winning our weekly Storewatch accolade, Asda just pipped Tesco and Morrisons to scoop the overall award for best for service.
All of the managers who featured in the Storewatch column in the last six months are highlighted on the right.
Availability remains a key concern for the trade. As the trade’s only independent weekly shopping survey, The Grocer 33 provides a key insight into how the top chains are performing.
Looking at our full-year results, we can see that their performance varies from 94% to a near-perfect 99%.
The latter result came from Morrisons, which we have named the best retailer for availability for the second year running. This high rate of availability was the result of only 16 out of stocks from 1,650 products sought out over the course of 50 visits.
Overall, we recorded a total of 390 out of stocks during the year, which is equivalent to one product in every 30 being missing from shop shelves.
n Next week, we plan to unveil some major changes to way we conduct and report The Grocer 33 shopping survey. So make sure you don’t miss our June 19 issue.
It’s official: Asda is the UK’s cheapest supermarket for the seventh year running. But as our review of the past year shows, it was no walkover for the Wal-Mart subsidiary.
In three of the four quarters under review, Asda recorded the cheapest average price for a full basket of 33 items. But Tesco pushed it all the way. It was top for price in the third quarter, and recorded two of cheapest individual basket prices we have seen in the course of the past year.
This year we decided to change the contents of our basket every quarter, and our review reflects that move.
The fact that all the retailers reported their cheapest basket prices in the final quarter of the year is largely due to the fact we introduced a cheapest on display Australian red wine to our list. In the third quarter, our results were affected by what we dubbed the curse of the frozen pizza. Problems with the distribution of Goodfella’s Ciabatta frozen pizza meant price and availability data for the first four issues of 2004 has not been included in this review.
But our store visits during those four weeks did prove crucial in helping us decide who should win this year’s customer service award.
This takes into account criteria such as the cleanliness of the store, helpfulness of staff and ease of the shopping experience.
Based on the number of stores winning our weekly Storewatch accolade, Asda just pipped Tesco and Morrisons to scoop the overall award for best for service.
All of the managers who featured in the Storewatch column in the last six months are highlighted on the right.
Availability remains a key concern for the trade. As the trade’s only independent weekly shopping survey, The Grocer 33 provides a key insight into how the top chains are performing.
Looking at our full-year results, we can see that their performance varies from 94% to a near-perfect 99%.
The latter result came from Morrisons, which we have named the best retailer for availability for the second year running. This high rate of availability was the result of only 16 out of stocks from 1,650 products sought out over the course of 50 visits.
Overall, we recorded a total of 390 out of stocks during the year, which is equivalent to one product in every 30 being missing from shop shelves.
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