Sainsbury’s has slammed Which? after it named the grocer as the priciest supermarket for a big shop if you don’t use a loyalty card.
The supermarket overtook Waitrose for the first time according to the consumer choice company’s monthly analysis, while Asda remained the cheapest non-discounter supermarket, coming in £33.52 cheaper than Sainsbury’s.
Which? also compared the price of a basket of 39 items and found that Aldi was cheapest, with a total average cost of £67.72.
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Asda cost the least as the cheapest ‘traditional’ supermarket. It cost £325.71, on average, for our big trolley shop, beating next-cheapest Morrisons (£332.22) by £6.51.
The analysis includes discounts that are available to everyone, but not loyalty prices (where you need to be a member of the supermarket’s loyalty scheme to get the discount) or multibuy offers.
In response to the Which? analysis, a Sainsbury’s spokesperson said: “These claims are entirely false and insulting to the millions of savvy customers who choose to shop with us every week. There is an overwhelming amount of independently verified data showing the great value customers get when shopping at Sainsbury’s. We are disappointed that Which has refused to share its data with us and has instead chosen to mislead customers by choosing to exclude Nectar Prices promotions in its research.
“The vast majority of our customers are shopping with Nectar Prices and have saved £400 million on their shopping in the last six months. Customers can be sure they getting great value every time they shop with us.”
Sainsbury’s added that Which? “cherry-picked 131 products and has refused to share with us which products are included.”
It said it came cheapest including loyalty pricing for the last two weeks in a row in the independent Grocer33 basket, which includes five supermarkets in the survey and stressed that “anyone can walk into our shops any day and swipe a Nectar card to enjoy the great value on offer, with an average of 5,000 products on offer via Nectar Prices.”
This week Sainsbury’s revealed it would be doubling the number of in-store screens to provide the largest connected digital supermarket screen network.
The grocer’s partnership with Nectar 360 and Clear Channel will place its own channel ‘Sainsbury’s Live’ in front of customers, where it can tailor campaigns on display with location, weather, events and competitions.
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