FMCG UK Price Comparison (May 2019): AmazonFresh undercutting leading rivals by at least 7.2%

Edge by Ascential has conducted a price comparison analysis matching a minimum of 3,553 branded products from AmazonFresh to 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?

On May 1, AmazonFresh was between 7.2% and 16.6% cheaper than its leading rivals. Asda, with 5000 comparable products to AmazonFresh, was the closest in price, followed by Morrisons with a price difference of 9.9%.

Compared to our previous analysis, the average price gap from AmazonFresh reduced for all retailers, except Sainsbury’s. The price gap between AmazonFresh and Tesco reduced from 13.4% on March 1 to 11.4% on May 1, reaching the price gap observed between AmazonFresh and Sainsbury’s.
 

While the percentage of price matches between AmazonFresh and Asda remained practically unchanged, AmazonFresh offered a lower price on 32% of the comparable products, down from 37.5% in March. This led to a subsequent increase in the percentage of products for which AmazonFresh was more expensive than Asda. The price gap reduction between AmazonFresh and Tesco was led by an increase in price matches at the expense of the percentage of products for which AmazonFresh offered a lower price.

The price gap from AmazonFresh reduced significantly for all retailers in the Health & Beauty category compared to our previous analysis. Despite this, AmazonFresh remained the most price-competitive retailer, with a minimum price difference of 13.6% from Asda.

The price difference also reduced significantly in the Baby category, where Asda was 0.3% cheaper than AmazonFresh. Sainsbury’s was only 0.6% more expensive than AmazonFresh. Meanwhile Tesco went from being the retailer the furthest away in price to AmazonFresh to be the third closest in price.

Edge by Ascential investigated how Asda became cheaper than AmazonFresh in the Baby category. First, the number of comparable products between the two retailers fell since March due to some SKUs – cheaper on AmazonFresh than on Asda in March – no longer being available on AmazonFresh. Second, Asda went from being more expensive than Amazon Fresh to becoming 22% cheaper on an average over 20% of the comparable items. All of these listings – mainly Pampers and Huggies nappies – were on a rollback promotion on Asda on May 1, suggesting the price gap might widen again once the promotions end.