Asda scraped the narrowest of wins in this week’s price comparison, with just 10p separating it from Tesco across the 33 items.
While the latest Worldpanel figures showed Asda’s return to growth, its basket suggested some of that may be down to inflation: our weekly shop cost 5.7% more than a year ago, or 3.4% if excluding promotions.
Nevertheless, EDLP and three price cuts carried it to victory. It led on price for seven items, including the Ginsters slice and Müller Rice, and matched a further seven.
Tesco’s eight price cuts brought the fight to Asda. Its £76.89 basket cost 1.4% less year on year. This week’s deepest discounter, Tesco had Nestlé Shreddies, Lucozade and Flash cleaning spray among its eight exclusively cheapest SKUs.
Sainsbury’s (£78.77) sold the cheapest Warburtons Protein Bagels, grapes, wensleydale and frozen broccoli florets, but was 2.6% dearer than Asda.
Further behind, guest retailer Iceland (£81.08) was 5.6% pricier than Asda and fourth overall. But the tables are turned when multibuys are factored into the equation. Iceland ran a whopping 15 multibuys on top of its six price-cut promotions, including 10 for £10 on everyday items like the bagels. Accounting for the discount on a pro-rata basis would make Iceland the cheapest retailer, with Asda 0.8% behind.
Iceland nudged Morrisons (£81.34) into fifth. It price matched just six cheapest lines and had no exclusively cheapest SKUs this week.
Waitrose (£88.95) remained off the pace. It was 15.8% dearer than Asda and 9.4% pricier than Morrisons. It price matched just one cheapest SKU thanks to a price cut on Jaffa Cakes. The biggest Waitrose premium was in the household aisle, where the Flash spray cost 34% more than anywhere else.
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