The battle between the supermarkets is heating up. Will it make your shopping cheaper?
Brand Match promises to take on rivals Tesco and Asda when it comes to branded grocery goods. That means brand names such as Coca Cola and Heinz, rather than Sainsbury’s own brands.
Basically, shoppers will get a coupon to the value of the difference if branded grocery goods they buy at Sainsbury’s would have been cheaper at Asda or Tesco. The promotion runs until 31 December 2011. Both Tesco and Asda already run similar schemes and this week Asda also launched a new promotion which gives shoppers a £5 “thank you voucher” when they spend £40.
We take a look at the supermarkets’ price war and the small print in their promises.
How does Brand Match work?
Sainsbury's Brand Match is a guarantee that if you could have bought an identical basket of branded goods (same size, flavour, colour etc) more cheaply in Asda or Tesco, Sainsbury’s will give you a coupon at the till for the difference.
The value of the coupon will be the difference between the Sainsbury's price for your basket and the cheapest price in Asda or Tesco for an identical basket bought on the same day.
So if your Sainsbury’s shopping comes to £30 but you could have bought the same basket of branded goods from Asda for £20, Sainsbury’s will give you a coupon for £10.
Brands on special offer at Asda and Tesco will also be included in the comparison, providing the same number of items are bought.
For example, if Coca Cola is on buy-one-get-one-free in Asda then in order for the Sainsbury's Brand Match system to compare the current Sainsbury's price with Asda's promotional price, you need to have bought two bottles or more in Sainsbury's.
Sainsbury’s will compare prices by running a daily web scan of the Asda and Tesco home shopping websites using independent data provided by brandview.co.uk. These prices are sent to all Sainsbury’s supermarket stores every day.
Catches to watch out for
There’s a whole ream of small print to wade through. Firstly, Brand Match is only available to in-store shoppers at larger stores, not online and not in smaller Local or Central outlets.
Crucially, as the name suggests, it only covers branded products. That is, products that don’t have Sainsbury’s name on. Branded products include products such as Kellogg's Cornflakes, Ariel washing powder, and Coca Cola.
But products bought from the deli, meat and fish counters or the Food To Go counter are treated as Sainsbury's own brand and are not comparable products.
Brand Match only applies against Tesco and Asda so if the same products would have been cheaper at Morrisons or Waitrose or anywhere else then you’ll miss out.
It just covers food too and not other items you can buy in a big Sainsbury’s store such as electrical items, homeware, CDs and games, and mobile phones.
The other big catch is that you don’t get cash back if Tesco or Asda would have been cheaper, you get a coupon. And guess where the coupon can be spent? In Sainsbury’s, of course – forcing you to come back, even though you now know it is the more expensive place for you to shop.
You have to admire their nerve.
What’s more, the coupons are only valid for two weeks so they may expire before you use them if you do a big monthly shop and top up locally in between. They can’t be redeemed online or for petrol at Sainsbury’s petrol stations, although you can use them in Central and Local stores.
Finally, the maximum coupon value is £10. Sainsbury’s says it’s “confident that very few, if any, customers will purchase branded products that in total are more than £10 more expensive at Sainsbury's than at Asda or Tesco”.
Hmmm... how confident are you? Let us know in the comments box below!
Is the deal any good?
If you buy a lot of branded products then you may end up saving some money. But the restrictions on coupon use will mean you’ll have to shop at Sainsbury’s again within two weeks before they go out of date.
However, in most cases branded goods won’t be the cheapest option. For examples four 415g of Heinz baked beans costs £2.49 at Sainsbury’s but four 420g cans of Sainsbury’s own brand baked beans costs just £1.30.
So if you really want to save money my advice would be to switch branded products for supermarket own brands wherever possible, and ignore the lure of the Brand Match scheme.
What do other supermarkets promise?
Tesco’s “Big Price Drop” kicked off a few weeks ago and involved the supermarket slashing the prices of “3,000 essential products”.
It offers a price promise too. Tesco Price Check compares prices with Asda and if the value of all comparable items (including both branded and supermarket-own) is cheaper at Asda you’ll get the difference as a Tesco voucher.
It’s a similar story at Asda. This week it announced it would be slashing the cost of 3,000 products and giving customers who spend more than £40 a £5 thank you voucher.
It also offers the Asda Price Guarantee promises that on a basket of comparable items (branded or supermarket-own), Asda will be least 10% less than the cheapest of Morrisons, Sainsbury's, Tesco and Waitrose. If not, you get a voucher for the difference, redeemable in-store.
Remember, you can figure out which is the cheapest supermarket for you to shop at each week by comparing your trolley at mysupermarket.com. And don’t forget Lidl and Aldi - the deep discounters are often praised by lovemoney.com readers as being far cheaper than Asda, Sainsbury’s and Tesco, whatever price match promises those supermarkets choose to make!
More: The pros and cons of online supermarket shopping | The sneaky way Tesco funds price drops