On the surface of it Waitrose’s latest marketing plan to match Tesco on 1000 branded goods seem a little bit strange.
The scheme has been backed up with a heavy TV, press, outdoor and email advertising campaign, and the launch of the price match has also received a number of mentions in the media.
Waitrose has carved itself a lovely niche in the market by offering quality premium goods, which is different from the low cost strategy of Tesco and Asda. It seems strange Waitrose wants to try and compete with the bargain supermarkets as it is already an extremely competitive end of the market; and an end that seems to demand a constant slew of the advertising in order to keep market share intact.
The timing of the price match is also bizarre. Why launch it now when the economy has recovered and not during the recession when value for money was high on the agenda? Also the thrust of this campaign is that they will match the price of Tesco, not beat it, not undercut them, not actually save anyone any money, so they are offering no unique benefit for people. It also does not match of the other several branded products that supermarkets offer.
A Waitrose shopper has been willing to pay a bit more for their weekly shop in a trade of for quality, they are the Marks and Spencer yummy mummy who are doing their big weekly shop.
So trying to position the supermarket in the same bracket as Tesco, one that is competitive on price, may also damage the brand’s reputation of quality.
However I think this campaign will work. It helps reassure existing customers they are not being ripped off by paying over the odds for the same items, and it will also help to draw in new customers as well. I can imagine this campaign has been launched after a lot of research in which the main finding was that people are intrigued by Waitrose but are put off because of the perceived high price of their goods.
But 19 years ago my mother, a regular Asda shopper, thought she would give Tesco a whirl after hearing it was a little bit better than Asda and just as cheap. So off to Tesco she went to do her regular weekly shop and to her horror she discovered that it had cost her over £10 more. She agreed that some of the goods were better, but she has never been back to Tesco to do her main shop since that day.
So the price match may work in dragging extra people in Waitrose, but once they discover that their shopping costs more the majority will soon revert back to their normal cheaper supermarket.
But a few may enjoy the experience and the food within Waitrose that they may decide to keep on shopping there. So I think this bold strategy will work for the company as it tries to snatch more market share in the ultra-competitive world of supermarket retail.
