Asda has returned to the winners’ enclosure after guest retailer Aldi interrupted its run last week.
The Walmart-owned retailer announced its latest round of Rollback promotions last week, with prices cut on 1,000 everyday items, and the effect was certainly felt this week. In total, 14 of the 33 items were on promotion this week, with eight of these Rollbacks, as its basket came in £3.50 (or 5.8%) cheaper than this time a month ago. It offered the exclusively cheapest price for 11 lines, with six of these thanks to a Rollback deal. These included the pitta bread, fresh penne, Magnum ice cream and Gillette shaving gel.
It was quite close. Asda’s £57.20 trolley was just £1.66 cheaper than second-placed Sainsbury’s. As a result it was forced to offer our shopper a voucher worth £5.90 as part of its Price Guarantee scheme.
But the margin of difference would have been greater were it not for a half-price deal on Glade air freshener at Sainsbury’s, £5 cheaper than any other retailer, one of six items on which it was exclusively cheapest. (Conversely, a promo finishing on the Glade at Tesco, Morrisons and Waitrose hurt their competitiveness).
Third-placed Morrisons was over a fiver more expensive than Asda at £62.47, while Tesco’s £66.02 total was a hefty £8.82 more than Asda and £5.76 (or 9.6%) more expensive than a month ago. This gap was mitigated somewhat by Tesco’s Brand Guarantee initiative, which resulted in our shopper receiving an instant discount of £4.43. This would have been enough to help Tesco undercut Morrisons for third spot, but still left it £4.39 more expensive than Asda.
Waitrose matched the lowest price for just four of the products on our list, with no exclusively cheapest items. Subsequently at £71.78, it was almost £15 pricier than Asda.
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