Sainsbury’s switches focus to Brand Match

A new spot for the sales promotion scheme will attempt to reinforce the message that customers won’t pay more for branded goods at Sainsbury’s than they would at Asda and Tesco.

Sainsbury’s customers receive a coupon when they pay at the till telling them if they have paid less than at a rival supermarket, or giving them a voucher to claim back the difference on their next shop.

Sarah Warby, Sainsbury’s marketing director, says: “This is the next step in making sure that Brand Match is the most widely recognised and trusted price matching scheme by UK customers. We know that value is important to our customers, as well as quality.”

The £2m campaign, due to break tomorrow (12 September), was created by AMV.

Meanwhile, Sainsbury’s outperformed the supermarket sector registering 3.8% growth in tthe 12 weeks to 2 September, according to the latest Kantar Worldpanel figures.

The impact of Sainsbury’s Paralympics sponsorship is not expected to filter through to the monthly figures until next month, however.

Elsewhere, Kantar’s figures signal that Tesco’s overhaul of marketing and service could be paying off as the supermarket registered a “relatively small” decline in share compared to previous months.

Its share dropped to 30.8% from 30.9% a year ago. Morrisons’ share continued to slip falling to 11.5% from 11.7% a year ago, which Kantar says is “inevitable” as the supermarket has no online operations and a limited convenience business – two areas fuelling growth in the sector.

Edward Garner, director at Kantar Worldpanel, says: “Despite ongoing pressures, things seem to be looking up in the grocery market and shoppers are not having to trade down to the same extent as they have done over the past year.”