The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has welcomed steps taken by Asda to make its promotions clearer for customers, a year on from the authority conducting an investigation into misleading price promotional strategies at leading supermarket groups.
Working with the Trading Standards Services, the CMA identified that 'some promotional pricing used by supermarkets could mislead shoppers', the authority said. The CMA followed up these issues with a number of supermarkets and their trading standards partners, including Asda.
One year on, the CMA said that it is 'content that Asda has stuck to its commitments to clearly label offers and discounts'.
Promotional Strategy
Among the measures that Asda has amended is a commitment to ensuring that it 'does not display the ‘now’ price for longer than it displayed the original (‘was’) price', as well as changes to multibuy offers, to ensure that said offers always offer a saving.
'The CMA welcomes the positive changes made by Asda and is satisfied that Asda’s pricing is clearer for shoppers,' the authority noted. 'This means that the CMA has formally closed its case.'
The CMA’s work with supermarkets followed its response to a complaint made by consumer representative group Which? in April 2015 regarding pricing practices in the groceries market.
© 2017 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine
