Brand View has conducted a price comparison analysis matching a minimum of 4,177 branded products from AmazonFresh to that of Asda, Morrisons, Ocado, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose.
The price comparison encompasses the following categories:
- Baby
- Beer, Wines & Spirits
- Grocery (Ambient, Fresh and Frozen Foods and Drinks)
- Health & Beauty
- Home Care (Household Cleaning, Laundry and Pet Care)
The analysis only includes products where there is an exact match and does not include Own Label SKUs. This is a shelf price comparison and therefore does not include multi-buy promotions.
Results
Our price comparison analysis revealed AmazonFresh was the cheapest retailer on average, followed by Morrisons. Waitrose was the most expensive supermarket, where AmazonFresh was 18.0 percent cheaper on average.
The order of how competitive the supermarkets were, compared to Amazon, did not change between 19 December 2017 and 1 March 2018; with Asda the second-most competitive ahead of Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Ocado.
Asda had the highest percentage of products (44.3) matching AmazonFresh prices, but only 13.1 percent of its range was cheaper than AmazonFresh. This resulted in 42.6 percent of the products at Asda being more expensive; the lowest of the retailers analysed.
Morrisons saw 27.4 percent of its products being cheaper than AmazonFresh, up from 21.2 percent on 19 December 2017.
Just 22.7 percent of the Morrisons range analysed matched AmazonFresh prices; significantly lower than its rivals, except for Waitrose.
We compared retailers’ prices further to understand how the average price difference varies at a category level. This showed that AmazonFresh was particularly price-competitive in the Baby and Health & Beauty categories, up to 34.1 and 22.8 percent cheaper than the other retailers analysed. This may be due to the shared coverage of these categories across all Amazon’s platforms, potentially allowing for greater margins.
The average price differences shrank in the Beers, Wines & Spirits category, where AmazonFresh was only up to 9.3 percent more price-competitive than any other retailers, with Asda reducing the price gap to 3.8 percent on average.
The percentage price difference between AmazonFresh and the second most competitive retailer also reduced in both the Grocery and Home Care categories. Morrisons was the second cheapest retailer in the Home Care sector, at an average of 8.1 percent more expensive than AmazonFresh, whereas Asda was 9.4 percent more expensive.
Using Brand View Positioning suite, we looked at how the six retailers compared to AmazonFresh in terms of average number of product images.
AmazonFresh had an average of between 4.1 and 5.1 images per product across the comparable ranges, with a maximum of 21 images. Ocado was second to AmazonFresh, with almost half of the products analysed being represented by at least two images and a maximum of 14 (an average of 1.9 images overall). Tesco and Morrisons had an average of 1.3 and 1.1 images respectively, whereas Asda, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose had no more than one image per product.
*Analysis conducted on 1 March 2018 using a London postcode.