Marks & Spencer has stepped up its drive to win back customers by cutting prices on almost 500 food items ahead of the Easter weekend.
Items such as Easter eggs, legs of lamb, and wine are included in the reductions with analysis by Good Housekeeping magazine suggesting that the cost of an Easter lunch for eight people bought at M&S is now £3.03 lower than a year earlier, at £34.18, making it cheaper than both Waitrose and Sainsbury’s.
However, it still remains well behind the other main supermarkets with the Easter meal costing £24.89 at Morrisons, £27.48 at Asda, and £28.26 at Tesco. Lidl came out the cheapest at £20.71, just ahead of Aldi.
It was recently revealed that M&S had written to suppliers urging them to help it lower prices and drive volumes as it prepares to launch its joint venture with Ocado and make its full food offering available in more of its stores.
M&S’s food Managing Director Stuart Machin has been tasked with reviving its grocery offering to enable it to rival the likes of Sainsbury’s and Tesco as destinations for the weekly family shop. It has been suggested that the group wants to double the size of its food unit to more than £12bn over the next five years.
Commenting on the latest price cuts, Machin said: “We’re in the early stages of our transformation plan to broaden the appeal of our food to family-age customers and make M&S more relevant, more often.
“You can see this shift in our marketing campaign. M&S is no longer positioning itself as special and different but special and relevant, with prices to shout about.”
NAM Implications:
- These cuts will no doubt make an impact…
- …and perhaps more so if M&S could find ways of separating Food and Non-food to help raise the profile of their food offering as a standalone business…
- Otherwise the Food/Non-Food see-saw will continue to obscure performance in each…
