Much has been made lately of Asda’s potentially game-changing price wars, but this week Sainsbury’s came in cheapest to pick up its third Grocer 33 pricing victory in six weeks.
At £69.66, Sainsbury’s was 16p cheaper than Asda, having offered the lowest price for 13 items, of which five were exclusively cheapest. These included the McCain chips, Shredded Wheat and watermelon.
It offered its loyalty scheme members an instant discount of £5.80 through its Nectar Prices deals. As a result Sainsbury’s defied prevailing inflation, coming in 0.1% cheaper year on year, while Asda was 3.8% more expensive than 12 months ago. Overall annual inflation was 2.3% but prices were down 2.7% compared with last month.
Asda was cheapest for 19 items and it was exclusively so for 11. But there was little evidence of Asda’s upgraded Rollback campaign: there were just three Rollbacks and four price-only promotions. And Asda largely failed to hit executive chairman Allan Leighton’s target of undercutting its supermarket rivals by 5%-10%. As well as coming in more expensive than Sainsbury’s it was only 3.2% cheaper than Tesco, though it was 5.6% cheaper than Morrisons and 17.8% cheaper than Waitrose.
Tesco was £2.49 more expensive than Sainsbury’s. Clubcard Prices saved £4.40 and it came in cheapest for a dozen items. But it was only exclusively cheapest for the Bertolli spread and the John West sardines.
Morrisons was exclusively cheapest for the shiitake mushrooms and Yeo Valley milk in a basket £4.28 more expensive than Sainsbury’s.
Finally Waitrose was exclusively cheapest for the cous cous and Zolflora disinfectant. However, it was well off the pace at £15.28 more expensive than Sainsbury’s.
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