MSE News: Morrisons to begin price matching Aldi and Lidl

Helix

kevin52 wrote: »

This makes me laugh. When Morrisons took over Safeway they scrapped the ABC loyalty card, introduced £! coins for the trolleys, and reduced opening hours. They have now gone back on all three. How could they get it so wrong.

Safeway actually scrapped the ABC card 3 years before they got taken over by Morrisons.

meritaten

not going to work. I prefer the Quality of the items at Aldi and don't mind if they are the same or slightly dearer than 'value' items. That said I do like Morrissons for the meat dept - its the only place I can pick up the 'cheapest' cuts of meat such as tongue. and their fish is ALWAYS fresh and good.

corbyboy

I hate rubbish like this. They have a database in which they know their products are more expensive, so why not reduce their price to match.

Instead they give you a voucher that you can use to buy even more of their expensive products.

geordie_joe

kevin52 wrote: »

This makes me laugh. When Morrisons took over Safeway they scrapped the ABC loyalty card, introduced £! coins for the trolleys, and reduced opening hours. They have now gone back on all three. How could they get it so wrong.

They didn't get it wrong, they were right at the time.

When they took over Safeway it involved getting rid of Safeway, including the IT they used. Morrisons IT wasn't set up for loyalty cards and Safeway IT didn't fit in with Morrisons IT.

So the choice were


Keep Safeway IT in the former Safeway stores and have the loyaty card in those stores, but also an IT system that wasn't joined up with the rest of Morrisons.

Or, Scrap the Safeway IT and card, install Morrisons IT in all stores and introduce a Morrisons wide loyalty card at a later date.

They made the right decision.

£1 coins for trolleys.

They haven't scrapped them, they have scrapped them in the stores that have shown they are not needed, they are still there in the stores that do need them.

There was two ways to do this.

1. Don't have them in any store, then introduce them in the stores where trolleys keep disappearing.

2. Have locks on all trolleys and then take them away in the stores that have shown they don't need them.

Option 2 probably cost them a lot less in lost trolleys so again the made the right decision.

Reduced opening hours

At the time it was just not worth them opening so late because very few people shopped late at night. As time has gone by more people are shopping later, so it became financially viable to open later, and that's what they did. How can that be wrong?

When they introduced 24 hour opening my local Tesco opened for 24 hours immediately. But 4 months later they went back to 8 til 8 because it was not worth opening for longer. Over the years, as more people have started shopping later (and earlier) they have increased the hours, 8 til 9 then 7 til 9 then 7 til 10 then 6 til 10 and now it's open 6 til midnight.

A supermarket setting it's opening hours to suit it's customers can not be wrong. Or would you prefer them to be open 24 hours and add the cost of paying staff to do nothing all night to the cost of the groceries?

It's basic economics, if you haven't got money going into the till, don't pay people to sit at the till.

I'm sorry but you can only ask "How could they get it so wrong" if you don't think and don't understand that times, and people change.

callum9999

corbyboy wrote: »

I hate rubbish like this. They have a database in which they know their products are more expensive, so why not reduce their price to match.

Instead they give you a voucher that you can use to buy even more of their expensive products.

Perhaps you'd like to rethink that... The WHOLE POINT of this is that they won't have any "expensive products" in relation to the other supermarkets any more. Any time you visit Morrisons your shop will be equal to or cheaper than the others (assuming you'd visit again).

If they simply beat the price for every product in the store by lowering the shelf prices then they'd go bankrupt. It's not physically possible to price match every single offer in every single supermarket while simultaneously being cheaper than the likes of Lidl/Aldi on all the non-offers.

geordie_joe

corbyboy wrote: »

I hate rubbish like this. They have a database in which they know their products are more expensive, so why not reduce their price to match.

Because they don't need to. More than half the people in the country can't shop at an aldi or lidl, so it doesn't really matter how cheap they are to them.

price matching is just there to fool people into thinking it's not worth shopping around to get the best deals.

Most shopper shop at the same supermarket every time. Either through laziness or because it's it's where they have always shopped or whatever reason. Having price matching just reinforces their "no need to go anywhere else" attitude.

corbyboy wrote: »

Instead they give you a voucher that you can use to buy even more of their expensive products.

They are giving customers a reason to come back. It's as simple as that, the first rule of retail i "If you don't give people a reason to walk through the door, they won't walk through it". So everything is geared around that. Loyalty cards, price matching, special offers etc. All designed for one thing, to give people a reason to walk through the door.

jobdone1

Straight forward shopping in aldi and lidl. No con's of but one get one free by inflating the price of the item you buy. No self service tills that are the most annoying pain in the a**se. The food is pleasant good taste and many different products from oversea which is nice to try.

geordie_joe

Helix wrote: »

Safeway actually scrapped the ABC card 3 years before they got taken over by Morrisons.

Technically they didn't scrap it, they shelved it. Scrapping implies "getting rid" of something, but all they did was stop using it. Obviously they got rid of, or transferred the people who administered it, but the software was still left in place and it could have been restarted at any time.

klint

At least Waitrose does it price matching right there on the shelf, on an item-by-item basis (albeit only against Tesco). That's much better than the whole-basket basis used by all the other shops. All you have to do is buy just one item that is significantly cheaper than elsewhere, and the price matching on all the other items you've bought gets negated.

pooch

treboeth wrote: »

Is this going to be another price match con?

If they are determined to be the cheapest why not just drop their prices?

We all know the answers.

My thoughts exactly.

If Morrisons want us to believe that they really are competing on price with the likes
of Aldi or Lidl, then they should just lower their prices accordingly.
They presumably know the prices at their competitors to be able to offer this gimmick involving cards and points.

If the prices really were competitive, then I'm sure they will see thir sales figures start to recover. But I don't think the GBP will fall for yet another price match marketing gimmick that has not delivered in the past.

Just cut the prices if they can afford to. If not, they should forget about trying to convince us they are competing on price and try and cut out a niche market they can aim at, whether it be local produce, convenience, luxury, or whatever.

Also make theprices at their local stores the same as those at their major outt of town stores. A Morrisons Local has recently opened near where I live and we were all very excited initially ... but now hardly anyone goes there (unless it's late because they are open until 11pm every day including Sundays) because they are so much more expensive than the prices they charge at their main stores.