After five weeks in third and second places, Asda has managed to claw its way back to the top spot this week.

A vicious round of price cuts and a muscular promotional push has caused Asda's total shopping basket to plummet by £2.13, enabling it to reclaim the cheapest 33-item shopping basket at £37.61.

This week's deep price cuts also meant that Asda claimed the cheapest average shopping basket of the six other retailers, despite only coming in first place once in the four-week period.

Asda's own label kippers, Australian red wine and Old El Paso Fajita dinner kits were among those items whose price tags received a sharp snip this week.

Our mystery shopper at Asda's Bridgwater store also spotted a staggering 14 deals and money-off promotions on The Grocer 33 list this week.

At £40.21, Sainsbury's basket price was identical to the one that it presented last week.

However, it still managed to claim the position of second cheapest supermarket, narrowly beating Tesco by 2p.

A number of Tesco's promotions drew to a close this week, causing its total basket price to rise 82p.

The price of Old El Paso Fajita dinner kits rallied by 87p, returning to their normal price of £2.65. Meanwhile the cost of Tesco's class one Iceberg lettuce rose to £99p, up from 74.

However, Tesco claimed the second average cheapest shopping basket for the duration of our current list, which is set to change next week.

Morrisons was in fourth place on the pricing tables this week, with its basket costing £40.48.

Average Basket

Asda£39.34

Tesco£39.63

Sainsbury£39.94

Morrisons£41.30

Somerfield£44.76

Waitrose£48.49

Period covered: April 29 - May 20Who we visited

Budgens Grange Park, Northampton

Nisa Park Parade, Hazlemere, Buckinghamshire

Tesco Express Baileys Court, Bradley Stoke, Bristol

Spar Hinchley Wood, Surrey

total bonjour Surbiton, Surrey



How they performed

We have injected a large dose of spice into our Top-Up Shopping exercise by boosting the number of stores that our mystery shoppers visit each week from just one to five.

By monitoring a greater number of convenience stores and forecourt operators, we will now be able to glean a much broader insight into pricing strategies, availability, and customer service within the convenience sector.

So, armed with a new ten-item top-up shopping list, our mystery shoppers descended upon their local Budgens, Nisa, Tesco Express, Spar c-store and Total Bonjour forecourt store to see what they could find.

Of the five stores that we monitored this week, only Budgens, Nisa and Total Bonjour provided all ten items.Budgens presented the cheapest receipt of the three at £14.48, as a result of a host of special offers, although at £14.55 Nisa was not far behind. In addition, our shoppers at Nisa and Budgens both said that they were impressed with the service that they recieved in store.

At £4.35 a four-pack of Stella Artois was 17p more expensive at Tesco Express than it currently is at a larger Tesco store. However, at just £1.00 Tesco Express was offering the cheapest price for a

2-litre bottle of Coca-Cola of the five other retailers. However, Tesco Express only provided 9 items as it did not sell unsmoked back bacon in a six-rasher pack, bringing its receipt down to £13.18.

Meanwhile, Spar's Hinchley Wood store did not sell Stella Artois or Tetley tea bags in the required sizes, although other sizes were available for each item.

At 34p Spar is the place to find the cheapest Mars bar.

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