In case you missed it, Tesco recently announced it was bringing its iconic Tesco Value stripes back from the dead.
The retailer has revived the blue and white labelling, which featured on some of its cheapest products throughout the 90s and 00s.
These stripes have been given a modern refresh and are now part of Tesco’s Low Everyday Prices campaign to ‘symbolise value’ and ‘highlight the low prices available on leading branded products.’
But is the supermarket actually offering good value, or is this simply a clever marketing ploy?
The retailer has been advertising branded items like Marmite as part of the campaign, which currently costs £2.85 for a 250g jar at Tesco or £2.30 for 125g.
Meanwhile, Tesco’s own-brand Yeast Extract in comparison is £2.50 for a 225g jar, and rivals like Waitrose and Asda are actually offering lower prices on the 125g jar, selling it for £2 and £2.28 respectively.
Metro spoke to Dr Sabrina Gottschalk, a lecturer in marketing at Bayes Business School, to dig a little deeper.
According to Dr Gottschalk, the stripes aren’t ‘deliberate manipulation’ of shoppers, but they will have an impact on the way you think about Tesco and its pricing.
She explains that bringing back the Value logo is a ‘nostalgia-based marketing strategy’, which is designed to feel ‘familiar’ and ‘reassuring’ at a time when many customers are ‘especially sensitive’ to pricing.
Nostalgia, as we know, can evoke positive emotional associations for many, and in this case, it’s likely causing Brits to fondly reminisce about a time when groceries were much cheaper, and Tesco Value prices still existed.
‘The branding works by making Tesco feel more affordable, drawing on shared cultural recognition and a light sense of playfulness,’ Dr Gottschalk continues.
‘Importantly, Tesco has paired the stripes with the Everyday Low Prices messaging and [made some] visible price cuts, which helps to ground these emotional cues in real pricing actions.’
As such, shoppers might find themselves ‘at risk’ of spending more than necessary, especially if the retro branding is applied too broadly across supermarkets.
‘The stripes may act as a broad value cue, encouraging shoppers to over-generalise perceptions of affordability,’ Dr Gottschalk warns.
And there’s something else shoppers need to be wary of before they get carried away thinking everything with the stripes is a huge bargain.
Dr Gottschalk points out that while Tesco is reinforcing a sense of value with its nostalgic campaign, it hasn’t explicitly made any direct price comparisons with its rivals as part of this.
This could be because some of the products are cheaper to buy elsewhere, as an analysis by The Grocer revealed. The publication examined pricing data from January 5 (when the Everyday Low Prices campaign first launched) and found that at the time, 32% of the products involved in the campaign were actually cheaper at rival stores like Asda and Morrisons.
They also claimed that hundreds of the items were just price-matched to other supermarkets, and some items hadn’t changed in price at all, remaining the same price in the run-up to the campaign, and following the launch.
While this might sound a bit cheeky, Tesco has never actually claimed to be offering the ‘cheapest’ products as part of its Everyday Low Price campaign – just ‘consistently low prices’ across thousands of branded items.
And for even lower prices, there are always the own-brand items to fall back on.
Currently, a 250g jar of Nutella costs £2.90 at Tesco, while a bigger 400g jar of the retailer’s own Chocolate Hazelnut Spread is just £1.65. Similarly, 320ml of Fairy Original Washing Up Liquid is 90p as part of the campaign, but a 500ml bottle of Tesco’s Original version costs 62p.
In response to The Grocer’s analysis, a Tesco spokesperson said: ‘Through Everyday Low Prices, we’re committed to delivering consistently low prices on more than 3,000 branded lines that our customers love.
‘Everyday Low Prices means customers can rely on consistent prices week after week, without needing to time their shop around promotions.
‘As the Grocer’s analysis shows, products in the scheme are priced competitively across major supermarkets, with the added reassurance that prices will stay consistently low.
‘Together with Aldi Price Match and Clubcard Prices, Everyday Low Prices is part of a broader value strategy that helps customers save across their shop.’
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