Sainsbury’s Nectar versus Tesco Clubcard: the best loyalty card prices revealed & why they’re not always value for money
MAJOR supermarket chains are locked in a battle to secure the loyalty of customers.
Earlier this year, Sainsbury’s launched Nectar prices, offering special discounts to cardholders in a bid to rival Tesco’s Clubcard prices scheme.
The chains are also fighting competition from discounters Aldi and Lidl and have brought in “price match” promotions on certain products.
But with all these competing deals it can be hard to work out what you are really saving by shopping with your loyalty card at one store or the other.
At the same time analysis by Sun Money recently found the range of own-label products at some supermarkets has been shrinking — forcing shoppers to buy more expensive branded items.
James Flanders and Laura Purkess investigate how the Nectar and Clubcard prices stack up and other ways to cut costs.
HOW WE COMPARED COSTS
WE looked at a basket of 12 everyday groceries at each supermarket to see whether we could save more on our total bill with Nectar or Clubcard.
We tried to choose like-for-like products as much as possible, but there were some differences in packet sizes between the two stores.
Often the items were under loyalty price promotions with one store but not the other – so for example – Kingsmill soft white bread was on offer with Clubcard but not with Nectar, whereas Nectar had a deal on Tropicana orange juice that Clubcard didn’t.
For the totals, where there was no special loyalty deal we added the full price.
WHAT WE FOUND
AT Tesco the basket would normally cost £31.92, but with a Clubcard the bill drops to £23.54 — a weekly saving of £8.38 or £435.76 a year.
At Sainsbury’s the 12 items came to more at £33.17 but with a Nectar card this dropped to £26.67. That amounts to a weekly saving of £6.50 or £338 a year.
Costs do fluctuate depending on which items each supermarket is promoting on any given week, so on a different week Sainsbury’s might be cheaper.
However, the majority of loyalty prices in both schemes were on branded items and to make the biggest savings shoppers would need to swerve member deals and instead opt for the cheapest own-label alternative.
By doing this we found our baskets at both supermarkets both cost a very similar amount – £18.06 at Tesco and £18.25 at Sainsbury’s.
That’s a weekly saving of £5.48 or £284.96 a year, compared to Clubcard prices. Or a saving of £8.42 a week or £437.84 a year, compared to Nectar prices.
We often found the promotions where Tesco and Sainsbury’s price match to Aldi offered greater savings than loyalty deals.
WHY STORES WANT OUR DATA
LOYALTY cards aren’t just about making shoppers stick with one store, says Adam Leyland, editor-in-chief of The Grocer Magazine.
He said: “Data is hugely valuable to supermarkets. It helps them to understand the likes and dislikes of shoppers in enormous detail, so they can tailor offers.”
But Jake Moore, an expert on data at cyber security firm ESET, warned: “They could potentially use this data to increase prices based on trends of what we buy.”
A Tesco spokesperson said: “We remain absolutely focused on providing great value.
“Our market-leading combination of Clubcard Prices, Aldi Price Match and price-locking 1,000 products with Low Everyday Prices means we are the most competitive we’ve ever been.”
A Sainsbury’s spokesperson said the store this week increased its Aldi Price Match to 400 products.
He added: “We re-branded our own brand value products under the Stamford Street range to help our customers more easily find our lowest cost products in-store and online.”
SCAM ALERT OVER ‘FREE’ CENTER PARCS HOLIDAY
THOUSANDS of families have been duped into entering a bogus competition offering free holidays to Center Parcs.
A Facebook page, called Center Parcs Elveden Forest, which used the company’s logo, published numerous offers to win breaks to the resort by liking and sharing posts.
Center Parcs confirmed it had nothing to do with the page or the “giveaway”, which had been liked and shared by thousands by the time Sun Money contacted Facebook and it was removed this week.
One post that was commented on by 3,400 users said: “Latest cancellation in our Waterside lodge for September, as it’s already paid for, before 11pm Wednesday HlT like WlN it free.”
One woman posted on the page that she hoped to take her grandchildren away for the first time and another said she desperately wanted to treat a relative who was terminally ill.
But entering the competition was not as simple as hitting “like”.
As soon as anyone commented on a post, a prompt sprang up saying that they had made it to the second phase of the free Center Parcs giveaway, with a one-in-ten chance of winning.
Then followed a series of pop-ups and questions that entrants had to complete.
They were asked for contact details and other personal information about their online shopping habits, whether they owned a home and how many cars their household had.
Finally, users were shown a number of different free trial offers that they had to sign up for in order to complete entry – for subscriptions to shaving kits, lottery games and recipe boxes.
Entrants were told they had to sign up to more than 20 deals in order to be included in a draw to win £1,000 towards a Center Parcs break – a very different proposition to the original post.
As well as gathering information that could be sold to companies for marketing and signing entrants up to subscription trials that they might forget to cancel, experts warn that the data collected could be used for impersonation fraud.
Harriet Cooke