Sainsbury’s follows Tesco with ‘Low Everyday Prices’ push

Sainsbury’s has launched a new value offering exclusively for branded products designed to help the retailer respond quicker to market demands.

The ‘Low Everyday Prices’ programme bears an identical name to rival Tesco’s ‘Low Everyday Prices’ and is similar in function given both initiatives promote value across branded goods.

Sainsbury’s Low Everyday Prices logo is written in a circle with a pound sign at the top. Again, this bears some similarity to Tesco’s Low Everyday Prices logo, which sees the text placed in a circle with a lock symbol below.

Sainsbury’s Low Everyday Prices replaces the existing Price Lock initiative. CEO Simon Roberts says the decision makes the supermarket’s value offering “simpler” and gives it “flexibility to respond more quickly to the market”.

Spanning more than 1,000 branded products, Low Everyday Prices joins the existing Aldi Price Match and Nectar Prices schemes, which Sainsbury’s claims offer customers “consistent value”.

Sainsbury’s credits price and product offer for Christmas gains

While Aldi Price Match focuses on Sainsbury’s private label range and Nectar Prices encompasses both private label and branded products, Low Everyday Prices focuses solely on brands.

Sales of branded products pushed ahead of private label last month, according to Kantar, increasing sales by 6.1% – versus a private label increase of 4.7% – in the four weeks to 17 March.

Despite the upswing in branded products, consumers are still keenly looking out for deals, according to the data. More than two-thirds (68%) of consumers are using promotions to help manage budgets, according to Kantar, while £605m more was spent on deals last month than in March 2023.

Supermarkets are responding by bolstering their value offerings. Today (3 April) Waitrose announced it is cutting prices on a further 200 of its products, representing its fifth round of price cuts since February 2023.

While premium grocers like Waitrose need to be conscious of offering value in this cost-conscious era, the discounters are also aware they cannot let up on pricing. Yesterday, Aldi doubled down on its value offering, pledging to top the £380m invested in price reductions in 2023.

Aldi claims to have already invested around £125m this year in price reductions, leading to lower prices on around 500 products. This represents around a quarter of its entire range and a third of its fresh fruit and vegetable offer.

Aldi doubles down on price promise as growth slows

During the cost of living crisis, Aldi and Lidl have rapidly gained market share to the alarm of the traditional Big Four supermarkets (Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Morrisons). Each of the Big Four has now launched some sort of price match initiative, with Tesco and Sainsbury’s price matching to Aldi, and Asda and Morrisons matching to both Aldi and Lidl.

Nearly one third of baskets across Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda collectively contained at least one price matched product last month, according to Kantar. Morrisons only launched its price match at the end of February.

In addition, many of the big retailers have rushed to offer their loyalty members exclusive discounts. Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons all operate member pricing schemes. Sainsbury’s claims its Nectar Prices now span over 6,000 products and the scheme is saving customers on average £12 on a £80 shop.