ASDA, which was recently voted Britain’s lowest price supermarket for the 10th year in a row, today revealed that it has worked so hard to fight inflation and offer customers unbeatable value, that it has saved the average family over £3,400 since 1997 including £668 in 2007 alone*.
While the country is suffering from an increase in prices of staple food items, ASDA has invested so much in price cuts that many items now actually cost less in real terms than they did ten years ago. In fact, a typical ASDA shopper’s basket of goods is now 22% cheaper in real terms than in 1997.
Some examples of prices of iconic everyday products that are cheaper at ASDA today than 10 years ago, taking inflation into account, are:
1997 (in today’s terms**) 2007 Saving
* Kleenex Tissues for Men £1.87 £1.00 47%
* Walkers Ready Salted multi-pack£1.36 £0.98 28%
* Nescafé 100g £2.44 £1.94 20%
* Ariel Washing Powder £3.21 £2.45 24%
* Twin Pack Andrex Toilet Rolls £1.38 £1.02 26%
Andy Bond, CEO of ASDA, said:
"Our number one priority is giving customers value for money which is why we are committed to being the lowest price supermarket in Britain. These figures go to show that week in week out of the past few ten years we are not only beating the competition, we keep on beating our own prices too."
ASDA is firmly committed to offering customers the lowest possible prices. In June this year it was revealed that ASDA had retained its position as Britain's cheapest supermarket for the 10th consecutive year. The chain beat Tesco to keep the title in an annual survey by trade magazine The Grocer, which compares the cost of 33 household items in Britain's six major food retailers.
Independent surveys also reveal that ASDA had the cheapest basket of Christmas goods of all the supermarkets and that it has consistently been the cheapest supermarket for the last six months.
Low prices will be all the more important in the New Year as the current credit crisis looks set to put a squeeze on household spending. uSwitch predicts rises of 10-20% in UK household bills in early 2008 and the Council of Mortgage Lenders estimates that 2.8m homeowners face sharp increases in mortgage costs. Rising levels of inflation also meant that households had to spend an estimated £230M more to have the exact same Christmas in 2007 as in 2006.
* Figure calculated by taking Grocer Magazine price basket from 1997 (33 items) and factoring in annual inflation to arrive at a comparable cost for 2007. The current price of this basket (as at Monday 17th Dec 2007) was 22% less than in 1997 (inc inflation). Taking the average family spend on Groceries of £3000, ASDA has saved the 'average' family £668 this year. Adding all the annual savings going back to 1997, the total saving would be £3407.29
ENDS
