Asda: What the removal of its price guarantee scheme will mean for shoppers
‘It’s a decision we’ve not taken lightly’
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Your support makes all the difference.Asda has announced that it’s going to be stopping its price guarantee scheme, having launched it eight years ago.
Using the price guarantee scheme, customers shopping at the supermarket are able to check whether their Asda purchases would have been cheaper had they made them at other retailers.
If this is the case, Asda then refunds them the difference if the product that they've bought is at least 10 per cent cheaper at another retailer.
Andy Murray, chief customer officer at the supermarket, has explained that the price guarantee scheme has gradually become more irrelevant for shrewd shoppers who are able to seek out cheaper deals on their own.
“The pace of change in retail has been unrelenting and today, the APG [Asda Price Guarantee], whilst still the ironclad promise it always was, has become less and less relevant to customers with less than one per cent using it,” he says.
“Today, customers are savvier than ever on the price of their shopping.”
So, what does the decision to remove the price guarantee scheme mean for Asda shoppers?
According to Murray, the supermarket is going to be making stronger efforts to reduce the costs of their products.
“It’s a decision we’ve not taken lightly because we love it dearly, but in reality, we know out customers don’t love it enough for us to keep it,” he says in regard to the price guarantee scheme.
“Instead they want us to focus our investment on lowering our prices, and they’ll let us know if we’re falling out of step with competition.”
The price guarantee scheme is going to be continuing until October 3 this year.
Until then, customers shopping at Asda will be able to redeem their vouchers for 28 days from the date that they received them.
Following the ending of the scheme, Murray states that the supermarket will be reducing the prices of several of its products in its local stores in October, with more reductions then to follow.
There are several websites that allow shoppers to compare the prices of various food and drink produce being sold at different supermarkets, such as mySupermarket.
Furthermore, some supermarkets still use price guarantee schemes, such as Ocado with its low price promise, which provides customers with vouchers with values up to £10 if their shopping is more expensive than it would have been at Tesco.
Asda isn’t the only UK supermarket to have announced that it would be stopping its price guarantee scheme.
In June this year, Tesco revealed that it would be ending its brand guarantee scheme, which gave shoppers the opportunity to match the prices of branded products.
Alessandra Bellini, chief customer officer at Tesco, stated that the scheme was far less relevant than it had been when it was launched in 2015.
Asda, which is owned by Walmart, is currently in the process of trying to merge with Sainsbury’s.
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