Tesco swoops for Sainsbury’s customers following Brand Match closure
Tesco is trying to poach customers from Sainsbury’s after Britain’s biggest supermarket said it would accept coupons from its rival’s recently ended ‘Brand Match’ scheme.
Sainsbury’s is ending the Brand Match programme, which allow customers to claim money back on a wide selection of branded products if their shop would have been cheaper at Asda, from 27 April.
Sainsbury’s claims the Brand Match scheme now only applies to a fifth of its shoppers. This, it said, is primarily due to shoppers abandoning one big weekly shop, resulting in fewer baskets that contain the 10 items, including at least one branded product, needed to qualify for Brand Match.
And starting from today (11 April), Tesco will allow Sainsbury’s customers to spend the money off vouchers in its stores until the end of June.
“This is a little help for Sainsbury’s customers from us at Tesco. It also provides the opportunity for Sainsbury’s customers to experience Tesco’s Brand Guarantee, which we launched in October, and has been universally welcomed by our customers,” says Tesco’s UK and ROI CEO Matt Davies.
“Tesco has also invested in bringing down the price of leading brands and has introduced simple, more affordable prices on many of the everyday, own label products customers rely on.”
The closure of Brand Match comes as Sainsbury’s aims for more transparent and lower prices on everyday items. It has also recently announced a plan to completely cut back on multi-buy deals.
In a bid to cut the price difference to the cheaper discounters Aldi and Lidl, the major supermarkets are all currently investing in price cuts on everyday items.
In January, Asda announced a fresh £500m in price cuts, while Tesco announced its own brand-matching scheme last October called Brand Guarantee, that offers an immediate price match at the till without the need for paper coupons. Brand Guarantee claims to ensure that customers will never pay more for their branded shop when they buy ten or more different products, compared with Asda, Morrisons or Sainsbury’s.
Last October, Tesco’s chief customer officer Robin Tyrell told Marketing Week: “When we talk to customers about these sorts of price matching schemes, you’re instantly aware of how many options there are. However what people tell us loud and clear is that they want simple immediate value as opposed to storing up vouchers for the future.”
