Supermarket chain Asda has been accused of failing to live up to its marketing slogan of “rolling back” prices, by rival retailer Tesco.
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The accusation was prompted when Tesco, the largest supermarket chain in Britain, hired market research group AC Nielsen to investigate whether Asda’s promise to give consumers price savings worth £100m between July and October has been implemented.
Researchers acted as “mystery shoppers” in Asda stores and the price figures they collated suggested that with just one month to go on the price rollback campaign, Asda still has £77m worth of savings to implement.
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By GlobalDataAsda, which is owned by US giant Wal-Mart, claims that the findings are wrong because Tesco used their own volume figures to calculate the value of discounts. On a basket of 2,000 food and household items, Asda maintains that an independent agency has proved that it is on average 11% cheaper than rival supermarkets such as Sainsbury’s and up to 20% cheaper than more expensive retailers.
Asda spokesman Rob Kenyon explained to just-food.com: “[Tesco’s accusations] have come as a big shock to us, really. We’ve invested over £200m in price cuts this year and the majority of these are permanent savings […] we’re not part of this yo-yo idea of price cutting.”
Last week meanwhile, Tesco, which claims to be 8% cheaper than rivals on average, announced that it would invest a further £100m in price cuts on 3,500 everyday products, starting in two weeks’ time. This follows on from the £60m in savings passed on in June and brings the total amount invested in savings over the last five years to nearly £1.2bn.
A spokesman for Tesco stressed: “We just want to make sure we remain the lowest priced supermarket around.”
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