Asda bagged the first Grocer 33 pricing win of 2022, but the key takeaway was the first sign of the inflation that is widely expected to exercise the minds of retailers, suppliers and shoppers alike over the next few months.
Compared with a year ago, prices were up 5.9% across the board. Our shopping list was more expensive than it would have been last January in all five retailers. Sainsbury’s and Tesco were most successful in keeping a lid on rising cost pressures in this basket: their total price was up 1% and 2.1% respectively. Waitrose’s basket was 6% more expensive than last year, Morrisons 8%, while Asda was 12.2% higher.
That didn’t stop Asda coming in £3.21 cheaper than runner-up Sainsbury’s. Costing £73.65 Asda offered the lowest price for 19 products, 13 exclusively so, including the Fentimans lemonade, Gressingham duck fillets, kiwifruit and red leicester.
Sainsbury’s offered the lowest price for 12 products and was exclusively cheapest for the bread loaf, Plenty kitchen roll and Walkers crisps.
At £77.18 Tesco came in £3.53 more expensive than Asda. However, it was offering loyalty card members a discount worth £3.59 via its Clubcard Prices initiative. This would have taken its total down to £73.59 – crucially 6p cheaper than Asda.
Like Sainsbury’s, Tesco offered the lowest price for a dozen items and was exclusively cheapest for the Birds Eye fish fingers, jam tarts, taramasalata and white cabbage.
Fourth-placed Morrisons came in just over a fiver more expensive than Asda at £79.08. It was cheapest for eight lines and exclusively so for the pasta salad and watermelon.
Waitrose remains an outlier on price, at £11.69 more expensive than Asda at £85.34. This was despite undercutting all its rivals on the Kellogg’s Krave and Richmond sausages.
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