Iceberg lettuce prices have plummeted at Asda, Sainsbury, Morrisons, Waitrose and Somerfield this week but the order of our top six supermarkets has remained unchanged.

Asda is still The Grocer 33&'s cheapest supermarket for our list of 33 items according to this week&'s results. Last week&'s report showed that Asda&'s shopping basket was just 10p cheaper than Tesco&'s. This week, the price gap has been widened to 44p. This is owing to a fall in the price of class one iceberg lettuce at Asda from 98p down to 64p.

Aside from this seasonal fluctuation in lettuce, basket totals have remained largely unchanged from last week. According to this week&'s results, Asda made no other price reductions to any of the items on our list. Tesco remained in second place with its basket costing £38.99, which is identical to last week&'s total. Tesco was already sporting the cheaper price of 64p for its iceberg lettuce last week, and no other change was made to any of the items on our list.

Sainsbury was this week&'s third cheapest supermarket at£39.40. The same 33 items cost just 37p more at Morrisons, which was in fourth place this week.

We paid £43.00 for our shopping at Somerfield this week. The retailer reduced the price of Heinz ready to serve tomato soup and also its iceberg lettuce.

However the promotion that it had been running on Walkers six- packs of ready salted crisps drew to a close and it returned to the higher price of 99p.

This meant that its total ­basket price ended up only 1p cheaper than it was last week.

Waitrose was once again in sixth place, coming in with a ­basket price of £43.77. The retailer had reduced its total by 13p since our last report.

The Grocer 33 will be nine years old next week and we will be publishing the results of our End of Year Report. In celebration of the survey&'s ninth anniversary, we have asked our six mystery shoppers to pick up exactly the same list of 33 items that we first shopped in 1997.
Gaelle Walker
Availability
GPI
Asda Shore Road, Belfast
30 Our shopper was only able to collect 30 items at Asda's Shore Road store in Belfast. The store was out of stock of pre-packed baking potatoes, Cathedral City Mature Cheddar 200g and Walkers crisps ready salted 6 pack. He spotted two deals, one on loose bananas and a three-for-the-price-of-two offer on Bounty Kitchen towels. We visited on 26 May 2006 at 17.14. Our shop lasted 74 minutes. Time spent at the checkout was 8 minutes 40 seconds. tesco New Malden, Surrey
32 Tesco's busy New Malden Extra store in Surrey does not stock white grapefruit, which meant that our mystery shopper was only able to collect 32 items this week. She said that there was heavy promotional activity in the store's alcohol section, including a great deal on Stella Artois 4 x 440ml. We visited on 26 May 2006 at 11.30. Our shop lasted 45 minutes. Time spent at the checkout was 7 minutes. sainsbury Bexhill
32 Sainsbury's Bexhill store does not stock prepacked baking potatoes in a four pack. There were no Mr Kipling's apple pies on display when our shopper arrived at the store. However, a friendly member of staff went to find them for her out the back and then proceeded to replenish the shelves. We visited on 26 May 2006 at 08.50. Our shop lasted 63 minutes. Time spent at the checkout was 8 minutes. morrisons Airdrie, Lanarkshire
33 Morrisons' Airdrie store provided perfect availability this week. All 33 items on our list were in stock and our shopper spotted bags of special offers, including a three-for-99p deal on own label diet cola, 50% extra free on Mr Muscle Bathroom cleaner, 36 for the price of 24 on Weetabix and two for £5.00 on Nescafé Original. We visited on 26 May 2006 at 10.20. Our shop lasted 57 minutes. Time spent at the checkout was 6 minutes. somerfield Ashby de la Zouche
33 Somerfield's Ashby de la Zouche store provided a full basket of 33 items this week. She added that there was a large volume of special offers, including two for £2 on tomato ketchup, two for 99p on diet cola, six bars for the price of four on Imperial Leather Original soap and 50% extra free on ready salted Walkers crisps. We visited on 26 May 2006 at 18.45 Our shop lasted 39 minutes. Time spent at the checkout was 3 minutes. waitrose Hall Green, Birmingham
31 Waitrose's Hall Green store only provided 31 items this week. Our shopper registered one out of stock on six packs of ready salted Walkers crisps. The store does not sell own label value canned spaghetti in tomato sauce. We visited on 26 May 2006 at 11.00. Our shop lasted 50 minutes. Time spent at the checkout was 13 minutes.
The Grocer 33 this week launches a new section - GPI - devoted to pricing at the top six supermarkets. Each month we will be analysing the latest findings from The Grocer 100 and The Grocer Price Index Prices up 0.9% over the past 12 months In our new GPI feature, the latest findings from The Grocer 100 and The Grocer Price Index basket surveys will sit alongside and support results from The Grocer 33 shopping basket to give us the broadest-ever insight into the supermarkets' individual pricing strategies, overall pricing trends, and any inflationary and deflationary influences apparent within the grocery market. Prices have been collected and compiled on behalf of The Grocer by retail research specialist ESA Market Research. The Grocer 100 tracks the cost of a secret basket of 100 items at the top six supermarkets on a week by week basis and provides us with a snap shot view of pricing within the grocery sector, who's cheaper than who, and by how much. Next week will mark The Grocer 33's ninth anniversary and we will be publishing our End Of Year Report, in which The Grocer 33's cheapest retailer for 2005 will be announced. As a result we have chosen to keep The Grocer 100 data under wraps until next week. However, the latest data from The Grocer Price Index, our monthly survey designed to monitor the average price of a basket of goods at the big four multiples, has revealed that grocery prices have risen by 0.9% over the past 12 months. This has been a turbulent year for pricing. As the graph above shows, there was a strong deflationary trend across the industry in the later part of 2005. Prices fell by 3% in the four months to September 2005, before peaking slightly in October, and then continuing a slow but steady downward march until December. This was followed by a sharp rise in the New Year as festive promotions drew to a close and higher prices were returned to. Grocery prices have continued to rise at a slow but steady pace since the beginning of the year, to rally quite considerably in the past month. The results for the first week of June have revealed a surge of 1.9% in grocery prices. The cost of our secret 100 item basket has risen by £3.27 since the beginning of May and now rests at £176.81. Analysts have attributed this latest increase to seasonality issues affecting a number of the fresh fruit and vegetable products on our list, as well as a change in promotional structures. David Hallam, food and drink industry analyst at Williams de Broë, said that he did not expect to see a fall in prices taking place any time soon.

Topics