Sainsbury's was a challenger for the cheapest retailer title this week, but its price cuts were still not enough to stop Asda securing its seventh victory in a row with a £38.74 basket. Tesco and Morrisons have been tussling for the second-cheapest retailer spot over the past two months while Sainsbury's higher prices have regularly placed it in fourth position. But this week Asda increased its cheapest own label Cheddar to match Tesco's £5.12 price and Morrisons upped it to £5.44, while Sainsbury's kept the cheese at the low price of £3.79. This helped Sainsbury's grab second place with a basket just 7p more expensive than Asda's. Sainsbury's, Morrisons and Tesco all managed to close the gap with Asda following a number of price rises from the retailer. Asda put its dried spaghetti up 14p to 41p and the Kellogg's Corn Flakes up 43p to £1.43. As well as the Cheddar increase, it added 51p to the red seedless grapes. Tesco's £38.95 total was low enough to hold Morrisons back for another week, despite Tesco making some hefty price hikes. It added £1.52 to the price of its Actimel drink to bring it in line with its rivals and followed Asda by increasing the price of Kellogg's Corn Flakes from £1.00 to £1.43. Tesco, in line with last week's trend, also pushed up bread prices -adding 24p to its in-store white loaf. Only £1.04 separated Asda and fourth position Morrisons, indicating how close the prices were this week. Morrisons had a quieter week for price changes but lost ground to Asda and Tesco with more expensive Cheddar. Despite providing 17 of the most expensive items on the list, and adding 89p to its Cheddar and 50p to the price of red seedless grapes, Somerfield still provided a cheaper basket than its top-end rival Waitrose. Waitrose had 12 of the priciest items on the list - its £46.57 total was boosted by expensive own label food and increases to the vegetable oil and dried spaghetti.

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