Tesco is adding more than 80 products to its Aldi Price Match scheme as part of its drive to win back shoppers from the discounters.
Several of the supermarket’s own-label products have been discounted to match Aldi’s prices, including Houmous, iceberg lettuce, baby tomatoes, and onions. Tesco has also cut the price of some frozen goods, including ice cream, meat, and personal care items such as shampoo.
Ashwin Prasad, the group Chief Commercial Officer, said: “We are absolutely committed to providing great value for Tesco customers, and we have carefully chosen more than 80 additional products to add to our Aldi Price Match scheme.
“We have added many customer favourites, giving customers the assurance that they are getting great prices on some of our most popular products.”
Last week, Tesco attributed its strong first-quarter sales growth and market share gains to improvements in its product range and price competitiveness. It revealed that it matches Aldi on over 600 lines while offering around 9,000 Clubcard Prices deals each week.
The group said in April that it expected profits to fall this year as it set aside cash to deal with a step-up in the “competitive intensity” of the British grocery market – a reference to a pledge of sustained price cuts from Asda to win back market share.
“We’re definitely seeing an intensification in competition. I think that broadly, though, it’s been a rational intensification, in the sense that everybody is kind of staying toe-to-toe with each other,” CEO Ken Murphy said last week,
“So you’re not necessarily seeing massive movements in relative competitiveness, but everyone has, I think, upped their game a notch.”
NAM Implications:
- Tesco are patently ‘not done yet’…
- …re finding an Aldi Price match and Clubcard discount combination that completely reverses customer drift to Aldi.
- (Replicating the full Aldi range in a bespoke discounter-aisle/s might have been a way forward many years ago, in hindsight)
- Fortunately, the Tesco brand is strong enough to stand Price match and Clubcard promos…
- …whilst forecasting a resulting drop in profitability.
- Not many retailers have that privilege…
