Disputes Over Price (Guarantees)
An earlier guarantee was launched in April 2010 and promised vouchers for an eight percent difference. But former Asda CEO, Andy Bond, upgraded the offer to a "copper-bottomed guarantee -- if the basket of food you buy in our stores is not at least 10 percent cheaper than each of our major rivals, we'll put our hand in our pocket and give you back the difference."
On
its website, Asda notes that its price guarantee "is powered by independent
price checker mysupermarket.co.uk, which compare the prices of 15,000 like-for-like
branded and own label products at Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury's, Morrisons
and Waitrose."
Customers entering their receipt details then are shown how much money they've saved versus Adsa's competitors. It has also created an interactive app with a money back guarantee.
But, The Grocer magazine checked out the promise and published its assessment just a few days later and found that figures from its regular Grocer 33 survey revealed, "Asda is a long way off its pledge to offer baskets 10 percent cheaper than its rivals."
Over the previous eight weeks, The Grocer said Asda only once offered a basket at least eight percent cheaper than all its rivals. "On average, it was just 1.3 percent cheaper than the nearest rival and occasionally it was 'more expensive than at least one rival.'"
The Grocer 33 is "a weekly mystery shopping survey, tracking price, service and availability at the five leading grocery retailers," compiled by BrandView.co.uk, described as "the UK's largest online market intelligence tool for price and promotional tracking and analysis."
Charts on The Grocer's website (www.thegrocer.co.uk) show the scores from each week's survey along with details of products, prices, promotions, stores visited by the week's mystery shoppers and products that were out of stock. Price and promotion history can also be tracked "by product, category and retailer."
Verdict analyst Matt Piner's opinion was "very few customers have actually taken the time to check Asda's price promise. This will rise now the company has increased its promise to 10 percent, and the scheme will obviously become more expensive to enforce. Asda is no doubt gambling the majority will be reassured their shopping is cheaper without actually taking the time and effort to check and - reclaim any savings."
[Author's commentary] The Grocer is not the only one to dispute Asda's sincerity. Tesco has gone so far as to make a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority, saying "It's a cynical ploy to mislead customers using a flawed comparison that excludes about half of Tesco's range, including lots of products that customers buy every day, such as fruit, veg and meat."