Tesco was offering special loyalty-based pricing on 13 of the 33 items on our shopping list as it continues to ramp up the pricing pressure on Asda.
Asda joint-owner Mohsin Issa told The Grocer this week the retailer has “made significant investment in price in the last couple of weeks” – and this does appear to be the case if we looked only at shelf-edge prices. However it was Tesco’s Clubcard Prices initiative that proved the decisive factor for the second week running.
At £70.86, Asda’s shelf-edge prices were cheapest by some distance. Tesco on the other hand was the most expensive at £78.60. This was even 30p more expensive than Waitrose. Shopping at Tesco with a Clubcard would have resulted in an instant discount of £10.17, reducing its total to £68.43 and undercutting Asda by £2.43.
The Clubcard deals reduced Tesco’s prices by 12.9% this week. Sainsbury’s meanwhile offered its Nectar members a saving of 8.3%. In cash terms this was a discount of £6.50, which reduced Sainsbury’s total from £78.53 to £72.03. This still left Sainsbury’s £1.17 more expensive than Asda.
Morrisons said it was launching exclusive prices for holders of its More card almost a year ago, but the scheme still does not seem to have reached critical mass. As such we are yet to see any impact of the plan on the Grocer 33 pricing survey.
Its £77.77 total was therefore £6.91 more expensive than Asda and £9.34 more expensive than Tesco’s discounted price.
Across all five retailers, year-on-year inflation was just 3%, while prices climbed a fraction month on month, up 0.1% compared to March. The biggest outlier was the twin-pack of mangoes which was on average 57% more expensive compared to April 2023. No other item rose in price by more than 17%.
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