Brand View has conducted a price comparison analysis matching a minimum of 1,584
branded products from Amazon Pantry to that of Asda, Morrisons, Ocado, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose.
The price comparison encompasses the following categories:
- Baby
- Beer, Wines & Spirits
- Grocery (Ambient 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 analysis showed that, on 1 July 2018, Amazon Pantry was the cheapest retailer on average. Asda, with an average price difference of 7.6 percent to Amazon Pantry, was the second cheapest retailer, followed by Sainsbury’s and Tesco. Morrisons, the second cheapest retailer on 1 May, placed fourth in our most recent analysis, being 11.1 percent more expensive than Amazon Pantry.
Compared to our previous analysis (conducted 1 May), the price gap between Amazon Pantry and its rival retailers significantly widened. In particular, the average price difference between Amazon Pantry and Asda increased from 0.9 to 7.6 percent. Morrisons’ price gap jumped from 3.4 to 11.1 percent, the second biggest increase after Asda.
Such significant differences, observed across all retailers and categories, suggested price decreases on Amazon Pantry’s website. We therefore investigated Amazon Pantry’s price moves between 1 May and 3 July and noticed a significant number of price decreases on 26 June, followed by a high number of price increases on 3 July. For a deeper analysis, we ran our price comparison study once again on 3 July only looking at products available on 1 July. As we expected, price differences shrank and returned to similar levels to those seen on 1 May.
Despite one of the widest increases in average price difference to Amazon Pantry (1 May – 1 July), Morrisons remained the retailer with the highest percentage of products cheaper than Amazon Pantry (22.3 percent). Of the big four, Morrisons was also the retailer with the highest percentage of products more expensive than Amazon Pantry.
Similarly to 1 May, Asda and Amazon Pantry matched prices on 52.1 percent of the comparable products, the highest of the retailers analysed, and had the smallest percentage of products more expensive than Amazon Pantry (36.4 percent).
Overall, the percentage of products where Amazon Pantry was cheaper than its rivals was consistently higher on 1 July compared to 1 May. The increase largely corresponded to a decrease in the percentage of products that were more expensive than its rivals. Sainsbury’s was the main exception, where price matches took over the lost share of cheaper products.
We further investigated price differences at a category level and found that, similarly to 1 May, Amazon Pantry was especially competitive in the Baby category. Contrary to our previous analysis, where Tesco was separated by the smallest average price gap (4.4 percent), Asda was the closest competitor on 1 July, with an average price difference of 14.1 percent.
Overall, Amazon Pantry was more price competitive than it was on 1 May across all categories. The only exception was encountered in the Baby category, where the price gap with Morrisons and Ocado was narrower on 1 July than on 1 May.
*Analysis conducted on 1 July 2018