UK retailer Sainsbury's has upped its attack on Tesco's price matching scheme 'Price Promise' with a new press campaign, launching today, 31 July, which aims to highlight the transparency of its own 'Brand Match' campaign.
The newspaper ads claim that Sainsbury's Brand Match campaign makes clearer and fairer price comparisons than Tesco's and comes just days after Sainsbury's commercial director wrote a slamming commentary of Tesco's Price Promise scheme on the Sainsbury's website.
The text for the new Sainsbury's 'Same price, different values' ads states, "Now that most of the big supermarket chains claim to be matching prices, you might be forgiven for thinking there's no real difference between them."
"But take the two loose bananas above. One's from Sainsbury's. It's Fairtrade - which means a fair deal for the producers, irrespective of market forces".
"The other's from Tesco. It isn't. They cost exactly the same. But that's where the similarity ends."
The launch of Sainsbury's campaign comes the same day as a ruling from the UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which confirmed that it has rejected a complaint from Sainsbury's on an earlier Tesco Price Match campaign.
According to the ASA, Sainsbury's complaint centered on the fact that some of the products highlighted by Tesco in the Price Match campaign ad 'were not comparable and furthermore considered that the basis of the price match policy had not been made clear'.
Crucially, Sainsbury's were 'concerned that non-price elements of own label products had not been taken into account or given sufficient weighting by Tesco when identifying matches for the comparison'.
"While we noted Sainsbury's concerns, in the context of an ad which explained clearly the basis of Tesco's price comparison, we concluded the claim "You won't lose out on big brands, own-label or fresh food" had been substantiated and was not misleading. In addition, we concluded the basis of the comparison was clear and did not breach the Code," the ASA concluded.
Tesco said that based on the findings of its own research, provenance of ingredients was not a key factor for their consumers on certain products, which was the case with those two particular products.
Commenting on the ASA's finding that Tesco's ad was not in breach of the CAP code, Tesco's UK marketing director David Wood wrote today on the retailer's 'Talking Shop' blog, "We are delighted because we know how good Price Promise is for customers. Price Promise is a simple proposition."
He added, "It is very simple, but it is very powerful. It tells customers they don’t need to worry about price because we’ve got it covered. We didn’t think it was fair that only in-store shoppers benefited either, so we introduced it for online customers too.
"A massive amount of work goes into making the comparisons, down to the quality of the individual ingredients, to make sure we make common-sense comparisons customers would see as fair and meaningful. The origin of a product can be important and where it is, for example Melton Mowbray pies, we compare by origin too. Where it isn’t a key factor for customers, we don’t let it stand in the way of making a common-sense comparison," he added.
Commenting on the ASA's decision, a spokesman from Sainsbury's said, "We understand the ASA has not upheld our challenge but we think customers would not agree with Tesco's position that provenance and ethics play little or no part in customers' buying decisions."
To read the ASA's full findings on Sainsbury's complaint, click here or to read Tesco marketing director David Wood's response to the ASA's report, click here
© 2013 - ESM: European Supermarket Magazine by Ellen Lunney
