Lidl lets customers vote on Christmas prices in social media ‘first’
The German discounter wants the Twitter-based initiative to put “control back into the hands of consumers”.
Listen up! The more you tweet about LOBSTER, the more the price drops. Clawsome! Full info: https://t.co/wEtE7YhrEz pic.twitter.com/fEujvZ8xd4
— Lidl UK (@LidlUK) November 21, 2016
Lidl has unveiled an ‘industry first’ social media initiative that allows customers to crowdsource the prices of select Christmas products.
The Twitter-based strategy means the more customers tweet about a featured Lidl product, the lower its final price will be.
The Lidl ‘Social Price Drop’ (a concept created by agency 360i Europe) will start with Christmas lobster, which has a starting price of £5.99. Customers will be able to potentially lower the lobster’s price by tweeting about it from 8am today (21 November) until 6pm tomorrow (22 November).
And every Wednesday in the run-up to Christmas the final prices of featured items will be revealed, with shoppers then able to take advantage of the reduced cost in-store the following Saturday. In-store ticketing will also highlight the ‘Social Price Drop’ promotion.
READ MORE: Lidl’s Christmas ad shows its turkeys from farm to plate
“The Social Price Drop is a first for any supermarket in the UK, and we’re incredibly excited about giving our customers the power on Twitter to lower the price of some of our finest festive products,” says Georgina Hall, head of communications at Lidl UK.
“Christmas is a very expensive time of year for shoppers up and down the country and as a retailer at the heart of Britain’s communities, our ambition is to put the control back into the hands of consumers and save them even more in the run up to Christmas.”
The move by Lidl comes amid a volatile period for supermarket prices. Last week at a press briefing, Tesco CEO Dave Lewis warned global suppliers not to artificially inflate their prices to exploit a fall in the pound.
In his first public comments since supplier Unilever tried to raise the cost of popular items such as Marmite due to a weaker currency, Lewis said price rises needed to be “justified”.
He added: “The only thing we would ask of companies that are in that position is they don’t ask UK customers to pay inflated prices in order that their reporting currency is maintained. They don’t do that for countries outside of the UK.”
why are only some of your turkey’s free range your brochure has rspca approved but then another range with no regulation . why ?? or am i reading the advert i brochure wrongly . .your current tv advertising shows the free range as total . .but you are stocking a not free range product its very confusing ..
Great example of engaging customers in a way where “the more they do, the more they can benefit”.
It’s clear acknowledgement that power has shifted to the customer and that the retailers who build that into their marketing and promotions are going to get better results.