Brand View has conducted a price comparison analysis matching a minimum of 3,928 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 again the most expensive supermarket, where AmazonFresh was 14.5 percent cheaper, down from 18 percent in March.
The order of how competitive the supermarkets were, compared to Amazon, did not change between 1 March 2018 and 1 May 2018. However, AmazonFresh was not as cheap as it was in March against the other six retailers.
Morrisons was cheaper than AmazonFresh on 28.4 percent of comparable products; up from 17.4 percent in March. Asda, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose also increased the percentage of products that they were cheaper than AmazonFresh on.
All of the retailers, except for Waitrose, had a greater percentage of range price matching AmazonFresh than they did in March. Asda, again, had the highest percentage of products matching AmazonFresh prices at 46.4 percent, up from 44.3 in March.
We compared retailers’ prices further to understand how the average price difference varies at a category level.
We can see that the Grocery category is where the price gap between the supermarkets and AmazonFresh has been narrowing. In March, AmazonFresh was 9.3 percent cheaper than Asda, in May this dropped to 5.7 percent. Morrisons was its nearest competitor in the category as it was 5.2 percent more expensive than AmazonFresh
May’s analysis continued to show that AmazonFresh was particularly price-competitive in the Baby and Health & Beauty categories, where it was a minimum of 13.5 and 10.6 percent cheaper, respectively, than the other retailers analysed.
The Beers, Wines & Spirits category presented more of a mixed picture of price changes. Asda, Tesco and Waitrose all narrowed the average price gap to AmazonFresh since March 2018, however the gap widened with Morrisons, Ocado and Sainsbury’s.
Breaking down the Grocery category into the Ambient, Chilled and Frozen Food sub-categories, we see that, almost across the board, the average price gap between AmazonFresh and rival supermarkets has narrowed.
The only instance where the gap widened was between Asda and AmazonFresh on Frozen Foods, where AmazonFresh was an average of 3.5 percent cheaper, before increasing to 5.1 percent in May. Asda increased the shelf price of a number of Ben & Jerry’s 500ml ice cream tubs to £4.80, almost double that of the £2.50 on AmazonFresh.
Morrisons was the only supermarket to appear on average cheaper in some categories, it was 0.5 and 3.4 percent cheaper than AmazonFresh on Chilled and Frozen Foods respectively.
*Analysis conducted on 1 May 2018 using a London postcode.