Image: Rui Vieira - PA Wire
Sainsbury's launches a new price promise today that it hopes will outmuscle its rivals in the ongoing supermarket price war.
The store's Brand Match scheme promises to ensure customers won't get be able to buy branded (ie, non-Sainsbury's) goods cheaper at Asda or Tesco. The nationwide roll-out follows an "overwhelmingly well received" pilot in 12 stores in Northern Ireland.
Sainbury's will use independent data to calculate, at the till, the cost of 13,000 goods against both of the aforementioned supermarkets. If the branded items in a shopper's basket would have been cheaper at either Tesco or Asda, the customer will instantly get a coupon to the value of the difference, ready to be spent on their next shop.
With shoppers apparently able to get the rewards of shopping around without doing any of the work, Sainsbury's describes its scheme as a "a revolution in retail". But is it really all it's cracked up to be? Let's take a closer look...
Reading the fine print
While a scheme that looks to guarantee customers the cheapest prices is certainly nothing to complain about, it's important to be sure you know what you're getting with big price offers such as these.
The first and most obvious flaw in the Sainsbury's scheme is that only branded goods are included in the comparison. So if you usually go for a supermarket's own-brand goods, you might be better off elsewhere.
On top of that, the cashback can only be spent in Sainsbury's stores within 14 days of receipt, and can't be used or issued on online purchases due to "technical limitations". A strange quirk in the system also means that customers can't use more than one voucher of the same value when making a purchase.
Shoppers will also have to spend at least £20 to qualify for the Brand Match scheme. That means it's only really good for a significant shop, and not necessarily for your day-to-day bits and bobs.
And as there are only two other supermarkets included in the comparison, shoppers will still have to do their own homework to discover whether the likes of Morrisons and Ocado could offer them a smaller bill on their shopping.
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What the rivals have to say
While Sainsbury's is confident that customers will be drawn to their stores by the new offers, its rivals are equally bullish about their ability to get people through the door.
Tesco was embarrassed last week when it emerged that a basket of goods at the store had actually become more expensive, despite a high-profile Big Price Drop campaign that promised cuts to more than 3,000 of its most popular items.
However, the UK's largest supermarket chain is still confident that it can outstrip its rivals. A spokesperson for the company told MSN Money that Tesco's simple price cuts made it easier for customers to save money than the Brand Match scheme would, and added that more than seven million of its Clubcard users had benefitted from the new, lower prices in the first week of the Big Price Drop.
Asda says that their Price Guarantee means they can promise to be 10% better value than rivals on a comparable grocery shop. Customers will receive a voucher to make it so if this isn't the case, although they will have to do the checking themselves by entering their receipt details online.
Morrisons, meanwhile, has not been included in Sainsbury's Brand Match guarantee, despite outstripping the supermarket in comparisons carried out by both The Sun and the Grocer magazine this week. The chain - which is enjoying the fastest growth of the 'big four' supermarkets - said it had no plans to respond to the price guarantees of its rivals, stating that its 11.5 million customers "think what we're doing is right".
Figures published yesterday by Kantar also revealed that Tesco and Asda - Britain's two largest grocers - were losing market share to smaller players such as Aldi, Lidl and Iceland and, indeed, Morrisons. That would seem to indicate that Brits are increasingly looking for better value by heading away from the bigger name stores.
So where is cheapest?
While there are various straw polls carried out each week on this subject, it's difficult to come up with a truly definitive answer to the question of which supermarket is cheapest. In reality, that will come down to your shopping habits.
That will depend on the mixture of goods you buy, how regularly you shop, any loyalty schemes you belong to (such as Nectar or Clubcard), and, of course, the cost of getting there (the chances are driving an extra mile to save on the cost of onions will see you losing out in the long run).
As ever, then, shoppers are best off shopping around, utilising whatever offers and loyalty schemes can get them value, and always being wary of the small print before being sucked in by a big price promise.
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