In the week Roger Burnley was named the next president and CEO of Asda, the Walmart-owned retailer claimed its 10th Grocer 33 pricing win of the year.
Burnley will take over from Sean Clarke, who in his 15 months at the helm of Asda, resisted calls for an all-out price war against the discounters. However, there are signs that Asda has sharpened its pricing again. After a period of close competition, this week’s victory is its fifth in a row.
Asda’s £52.71 was £1.96 cheaper than second-placed Sainsbury’s, which claimed the runner-up spot for the second week running. Asda offered the lowest price for 21 of our 33 items, with 13 of these exclusively cheapest.
Despite this, it still had to dish out a voucher worth £5.24 under the Asda Price Guarantee scheme. It will be interesting to see what Burnley does with this initiative, which has been under review since Clarke joined last year.
Sainsbury’s was exclusively cheapest for three items - the Scotch pancakes, pork steaks and the Villa Maria sauvignon blanc, but it was its £7.50 price for the wine - almost £2 cheaper than any of its rivals - that made the biggest impact on its competitiveness this week.
Morrisons was third on £55.15 - £2.44 more expensive than Asda. Tesco, meanwhile, was a further 11p more expensive at £55.26. However, our Tesco shopper did receive an instant discount of £1.12 as part of Brand Guarantee. This brought Tesco’s total down to £54.14, and while this would have made it cheaper than Sainsbury’s, it was still £1.43 more expensive than Asda.
In fifth, Waitrose was £7.70 dearer than Asda. This week it offered the cheapest price for six items and was actually cheaper than any of its rivals on the Buster plughole unblocker, melon and Jus-Rol pastry.
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