Less than two weeks away from the launch of its online offer with Ocado, Marks & Spencer is targeting the mainstream supermarkets with a campaign that highlights its more competitive pricing on a range of grocery staples.
The retailer has spent the last 18 months expanding its food range and lowering prices on key lines in an attempt to encourage customers to do fuller, more regular shops in its stores and make sure it can replace the Waitrose offer currently sold by Ocado.
Using the ‘Remarksable’ strapline launched year, the latest M&S Food campaign will focus on everyday items such as bread, milk, cheese, eggs, salmon and mince with the aiming of persuading shoppers that its food is cheaper than they may think.
The retailer highlighted that a typical family basket of 20 staple products now costs £26.66 at M&S compared to £33.79 in August 2019.
From tomorrow, there will be 240 ‘Remarksable’ lines in its stores. Every product has been price benchmarked against key competitors, whilst “upholding M&S’s quality point of difference”.
The campaign will include TV advertising and signage throughout the retailer’s stores. Shoppers can also pick up a dedicated in-store magazine – ‘What’s Fresh at M&S’ – which contains product information on the Remarksable lines and behind the scenes supplier stories.
In addition, M&S’s resident chef Chris Baber will share monthly recipes in the retailer’s ‘Feed Your Family M&S Food’ content series which showcases family meal ideas. The series will feature in the new magazine, across social media channels, and on its website.
M&S Food MD Stuart Machin said: “We have spent the past 18 months continuously upgrading our quality and at the same time investing in price and now customers can see the result as 240 key staple items are the most competitively priced in recent history.
“We will never compromise on our quality but our strategy is to maintain our high sourcing standards whilst providing truly better value for customers and our early work is already starting to resonate.”
NAM Implications:
- How about separating the food & non-food business models…
- …to really focus stakeholder perspective on food performance at aisle level?
