Supermarket special offers continue to mislead shoppers, latest research from Which? reveals on Wednesday.
Which?, the consumer group, tracked the pricing and offers for 450 products available at Asda, Iceland, Morrisons (LON:MRW), Ocado (LON:OCDO), Sainsbury’s (LON:SBRY), Tesco (LON:TSCO) and Waitrose.
Though some of the deals were genuine, research shows that 65 instances across the year involved misleading discounts that did not genuinely represent the bargains being advertised.
The only supermarket to have all of its offers meet the guidelines issued by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) was Sainsbury’s.
Which? revealed the three general categories of misleading offers – multibuys, was/now discounts, and those that are always on offer.
The data shows that misleading offers were used to sell products such as Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut Cornflakes sold in Iceland, Cathedral City Mature Cheddar sold in Morrisons and Wall’s Carte D’Or Strawberry Ice Cream sold in Asda.
“We spotted a variety of offers like this across a variety of products in six of the seven supermarkets we looked at. We didn’t find any dodgy discounts at Sainsbury’s – all of its offers met the guidelines set by the CMA,” Which? said in its report.
Elsewhere in supermarket news, data by Kantar revealed the first overall growth decline in the supermarket sector since June 2016.
Earlier this year, Sainsbury’s £7.3 billion takeover of Asda was blocked by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) because it would have created a “poorer overall shopping experience”.
Shares in J Sainsbury plc (LON:SBRY) were trading at +1.78% as of 10:10 BST Wednesday. Tesco plc (LON:TSCO) shares were up 2.43% at of 10:11 BST, whilst Ocado Group plc (LON:OCDO) shares were down 1.78% as of 10:12 BST and shares in WM Morrison Supermarket plc (LON:MRW) were up 2.20% as of 10:12 BST.
