Sainsbury's has regained the top spot in the retailer activity chart from Morrisons.

Accounting for 26% of the space allocated to promotions by the top five retailers, Sainsbury's choice of mechanics marked a dramatic shift from bogofs to price cuts this week.

The promotional mechanics used by each retailer to some degree depended on the categories they chose to promote. But Sainsbury's featured space aisles and secondary locations were teeming with basic 'save' offers, which accounted for 48% of its promotions.

Buy-one-get-one-free was relegated to third place behind x-for-y, accounting for just 16% of activity - in stark contrast to its 65% showing the previous week (x-for-y accounted for 29%).

Sainsbury's top five categories on promotion were alcohol, which accounted for 35% of its promotions, followed by impulse with 25%, health/beauty & baby with 20%, grocery with 12% and frozen with 8%.

Both Tesco and Morrisons, however, still used bogof as their primary mechanic. Morrisons, in second place with 24% of offers, had a different promotional mix to Sainsbury's, with impulse accounting for 27% of its promotions, grocery 23%, alcohol 21%, health, beauty & baby 15% and household 14%.

Asda and Tesco were joint third with 18% of offers each. Asda's activity focused on alcohol and frozen in joint first place with a 24% share of space each, followed by grocery with 22%, health/beauty & baby with 16% and impulse with 14%.

Tesco's offers were more closely matched. Health/beauty & baby was the most heavily promoted category, accounting for 24% of featured space activity, followed by impulse with 23%, alcohol with 22%, grocery with 17% and frozen with 14%.

Somerfield also boasted a variety of offers. Impulse topped the chart with 35% of activity, followed by alcohol with 25%, grocery with 24%, household with 9% and petcare with 7%.