FMCG UK Price Comparison (March): AmazonFresh undercutting leading rivals by at least 9.3%

Edge by Ascential has conducted a price comparison analysis matching a minimum of 3,800 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.

How much cheaper is AmazonFresh really?

As with previous price comparison studies, Amazon’s prices were cheaper than all leading rivals in the analysis. With price gaps of 9.3% and 17.2% respectively, Asda and Waitrose remained the closest and furthest in price to AmazonFresh.

The price gap between AmazonFresh and other retailers reduced for nearly all the retailers except Asda (+0.6%). Sainsbury’s enjoyed the largest reduction in price gap between its own and Amazon’s prices, surpassing Tesco and becoming the third-closest retailer in price to AmazonFresh in the period since our previous analysis.

Much of Sainsbury’s drastic reduction was due to an increase in price matches and a decrease in the share of products which were cheaper on AmazonFresh (-6.7%) in comparison to January.

On the other hand, the share of price matches between Asda and AmazonFresh sharply decreased, by 4.4%. The share of products cheaper on Asda than AmazonFresh increased, but not enough to prevent another increase in the overall price gap between the two retailers during this period.

Meanwhile, Tesco recorded an increase of 2.6% in the share of products for which it offered a lower price compared to AmazonFresh.

Overall, Health & Beauty saw the greatest reduction in average price gap this period. Compared to January, Sainsbury’s reduced its price gap in all categories and became the closest retailer in price to AmazonFresh in Health & Beauty.

Sainsbury’s also went from having the largest price gap from AmazonFresh in Beers, Wines and Spirits in January to the lowest in March, decreasing from 12.2% to 6.2%. While all other retailers’ price gap from AmazonFresh remained relatively stable in the Beers, Wines and Spirits, Asda’s price gap increased by 4.4%.

This substantial reduction in price gap in the Beers, Wines and Spirits category between Sainsbury’s and AmazonFresh is due to both a surge in the number of products whose prices have increased on AmazonFresh coupled with an increase in the number of products in Sainsbury’s whose prices have decreased. For instance, of the 299 products analyzed, 41.1% recorded a price increase on AmazonFresh compared to only 26.1% in Sainsburys, while 17.7% percent of products in Sainsbury’s saw a price reduction, against only 9.4% on AmazonFresh.

We also analysed the promotional activity in Sainsbury’s on 1 January and 1 March and found that the percentage of the 299 products on promotion more than doubled. The average depth of cut also increased, further supporting the significant price drop we observed in the category.

*Analysis conducted on 1 March 2019 using a London postcode