Cheap groceries: more Sainsbury’s price cuts in supermarket price war

Your Sainsbury's grocery bill is about to get cheaper after the supermarket announced another round of price cuts. Here's everything you need to know.

Sainsbury's has confirmed that it is investing millions in a new raft of price cuts across the store.

It’s just the latest stage in the ongoing supermarket price war that’s seen the big names have to revamp how they operate in order to keep our custom  – and the good news is that it’s leaving us shoppers better off as a result.

Prices falling

According to Sainsbury’s, around £50 million is being ‘invested’ in this new round of price cuts, which apply initially from this Wednesday 7th July.

A total of 43 products, from across the meat, dairy and fresh produce categories, will have their prices dropped by up to 25%, with a further 17 items becoming cheaper by the end of July.

The cuts apply to staple items like bacon, potatoes, cherries and strawberries, with the supermarket committing to keeping the lower prices in place for the foreseeable future. 

Sainsbury's price cuts

Sainsbury’s has been busy of late finding ways to reduce its prices in a bid to appeal to more shoppers.

For example, back in February it launched a price match scheme with Aldi, which means that around 250 items will cost the same at Sainsbury’s as at the deep discounter.

Alongside that, it has a price lock campaign, which is where the prices of around 2,500 everyday products are locked in place for a period of at least eight weeks.

The idea is that by locking the price in this way, shoppers enjoy a bit more consistency over what their usual grocery shop is going to cost.

Sainsbury’s has said that these schemes have already got a good response from shoppers, and so it wanted to add to them with the latest batch of price cuts.

The fight for our food custom

There is no escaping the fact that the battle for our grocery shopping is fierce, and only getting hotter off the back of the pandemic. 

In the years building up to the arrival of Covid, the deep discounters of Aldi and Lidl enjoyed rapid growth in the UK.

While they had always appealed because of the lower prices on offer, more and more of us were won over by the quality of the produce too.

However, things started to shift with the pandemic.

As people understandably became more reticent about heading to supermarkets in person, the stores that offered deliveries or click and collect services ‒ in other words, the supermarket giants ‒ began to thrive.

The Kantar WorldPanel breakdown of supermarket market share demonstrates this pretty clearly.

It found that between March 2020 and the end of 2020, Tesco’s market share rose from 26.8% to 27.3% and Sainsbury’s rose from 15.3% to 15.9%.

Meanwhile, the market share of Aldi dropped from 8.2% to 7.4%, and Lidl’s remained unchanged at 6.1%.

However, since then ‒ as things have started to loosen a touch ‒ it seems shoppers are heading back to those stores that they believe deliver better value than the big boys.

Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda have all seen their market share drop since the start of the year, while Aldi’s has rebounded to 8.2%. Lidl’s share is unmoved still, while the Co-op has seen a small rise.

It’s no coincidence that Sainsbury’s is announcing these product price cuts now, while Tesco and Asda have also come up with their own ideas to improve the way they compete with the deep discounters.

Given the economic turmoil so many people have faced ‒ and will continue to face in the months ahead ‒ price really will be everything for plenty of shoppers, so supermarkets are wise to keep finding ways to trim what they charge and improve their appeal. 

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