Asda continued its winning streak and increased its lead over rivals in this week’s price comparison survey.
Asda cleaned up on exclusively cheapest SKUs. It had 11, while Sainsbury’s managed four, Tesco one, and Morrisons and Waitrose none.
Asda’s £79.18 basket matched a further nine cheapest products. Its largest price leads were thanks to rollback promotions on the Trivento malbec and own-label pizza, while it was one or two pennies cheaper on the Jordans cereal, Haliborange softies, root veg mash and grated parmesan.
This week, Fitch downgraded its assessment of Asda’s debt in anticipation of a sharper decline in profitability as the retailer invests in lower prices.
Our basket contains examples of where Asda’s pricing has moved away from the pack. Across all retailers, frozen blueberries cost an average of 22% more than a year ago. At Asda they are up by only 6%, compared with 13% at Sainsbury’s and 33% at Morrisons and Tesco. Pink lady apples are down 7% year on year at Asda, but up by at least 4% at rivals.
Still, Asda is behind its target to beat its peers by 5%-10%. It was 2.2% cheaper than Sainsbury’s (£80.99), 3.9% cheaper than Tesco (£82.43), 6.4% cheaper than Morrisons (£84.55) and 14.5% cheaper than Waitrose (£92.58).
Sainsbury’s price cuts were the deepest this week, shaving 8.5% (£6.90) off its total. Its basket cost 7.2% less than a week ago and 3.3% less month on month. But if you don’t have a Nectar card, prices are up by 0.3% and 0.5% respectively.
Our basket total rose by an average of 1% year on year, or by 2.6% excluding loyalty pricing. Blueberries, dark chocolate and parmesan show the biggest annual increases, and rice, pitta bread and baby tomatoes the largest falls.
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