After the debacle with its visual impairment mystery shop Asda was at least cheapest in this week’s price comparison survey, but not by its targeted 5%-10% margin of victory.
Our basket featured a number of brands with packaging designed to help blind or partially sighted shoppers, such as NaviLens colour matrix or Seeing AI barcodes, tactile labels, and prepared or pre-cut items.
At £76.72, Asda was 1.2% cheaper than Tesco and 3.8% cheaper than Morrisons. Its 12 discounts totalled 6.7%, the shallowest, but that didn’t change the result. Asda was cheapest for 14 products and exclusively so for 10 of those.
Asda’s basket cost 6.2% more than last year, while in second place Tesco narrowed the gap with a gentler 1.5% rise. Its £77.67 basket contained the exclusively cheapest Deli Kitchen flatbreads, Herbal Essences shampoo and Strongbow cider. Pro-rating for multibuy discounts would make Tesco 39p cheaper than Asda.
Morrisons was exclusively cheapest on five SKUs and was third this week with a £79.77 basket.
Sainsbury’s (£80.57) was largely let down by the price of Plenty kitchen roll. The product happened to be on a price cut promotion everywhere else, so it was £2.30 dearer. Asda was 4.8% cheaper than Sainsbury’s.
Waitrose’s £91 basket missed the mark. prices were up 5.8% year on year and there were no exclusively cheapest and just three joint-cheapest products. Asda was 15.7% cheaper.
This week, Worldpanel reported that discounts accounted for 29% of all grocery spending [4 w/e 25 January 2026], up from 27.3% last year. In our basket half the items were on a price cut or multibuy promotion at Morrisons and Sainsbury’s (16 SKUs each), followed closely by Tesco (15).
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