What’s more important at the supermarket: price or experience?

The table legend explains the scores:
“Customer score: This is based on a combination of overall satisfaction and how likely people are to recommend the supermarket to a friend. It doesn’t factor in the individual star ratings.

Read more: https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/supermarkets/article/best-and-worst-supermarkets/supermarkets-compared – Which?”

I don’t think I would ‘recommend’ a supermarket to anyone but I might be able to point out strengths and weaknesses. It would be good to have access to the questions that were asked in the survey.

It just looks a very false graph to me wavechange.

I’d like to see supermarkets also rated on a common selection of their “own brand” products, not (just) the big, expensive, names.

My eldest daughter used Tesco and Waitrose/Ocado but has recently shopped at Aldi and praised their meat, fish and fresh produces. But not their bread, and would not buy their ready meals Good value for money on what she buys. I’d give it a try if it were nearer although we are very happy with the range and quality of our local M&S.

The star ratings and the percentages are measuring different things and will be averages over a large number of supermarkets, sometimes of very different sizes.

I doubt anyone would change their shopping habits from reading this report. It might be useful to focus on one aspect such as quality or price and explore that in depth.

Many speak very highly of Sainsbury but round here we just have a few Sainsbury’s Local branches with limited stock. While trying to find out where food retailer featured compared with the likes of Currys PC World and Kingisher (B&Q etc) I discovered Sainsbury is a major player: https://www.retaileconomics.co.uk/top10-retailers.asp We could do with a decent sized Sainsbury supermarket but what we are going to get, despite considerable opposition, is a McDonalds drive thru. 🙁

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Where I used to live we had a Sainsbury’s Local but it had a limited stock and there was nowhere to park. We don’t have a Metro. I have visited Sainsbury supermarkets elsewhere when I have been on holiday and was impressed. I commented mainly because I had no idea that the company is such a large player in the retail world.

We do most of our shopping at Ocado but have a Sainsbury’s local close by and a medium sized store not too far away that we do most of our additional shopping and some meat and veg.

Until recently, Sainsbury’s did excellent steak but we have been disappointed with the last couple we have bought, the last ones being quite grisly. They stopped their really good gold label range some time ago, but the others were also quite good. They have now deteriorated which is a shame and we might have to look elsewhere.

I have just remembered that we do have a large Sainsbury but it’s a long way from where I live. At one time I made monthly expeditions there every few weeks, but that was before the invasion of a locally unheard of company called Tesco.

Aldi and Lidl seem to have the same approach, so if we group them together, their combined market share is around 12% https://www.kantarworldpanel.com/en/grocery-market-share/great-britain
This site allows you to explore how market share of supermarkets has changed over recent years.

Although these supermarkets are employing British people and selling British meat I would prefer to buy from supermarkets and energy companies that are owned by foreign countries. It looks as if Tesco might try the same approach: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/feb/11/tesco-planning-discount-chain-to-take-on-aldi-and-lidl

About ten miles away, Aldi set up a new store next to Waitrose and both seem popular. One offers cheaper products and the other has a more comprehensive range. If I lived there I would probably use both.

Wavechange – Did you mean “. . . I would prefer to buy from supermarkets and energy companies that are not owned by foreign countries”?

I wondered the same thing. I don’t think my local Lidl has a single person working there with English as a first language. They are all very pleasant and helpful though.

It’s interesting you say M&S are “no good for a complete shop”. That is true in principle, but we do a virtually complete shop there each week – food, basic toiletries, detergents, wine and cider, sweets, ……… But there are products we need to buy irregularly that they do not stock, including Bovril and ginger marmalade, plus other non-food items. Fortunately (?) we have a Tesco at the other end of the High Street and drop in therer about once a month to top-up,

John – Quite right and I hope the context makes it obvious. Unfortunately there is nothing I can do about correcting the mistake. 🙁

Alfa – I assume that the cost and productivity-driven approach adopted by Aldi and Lidl are uncongenial to the average British supermarket worker who has their own idea of pace and activity. My main complaint with M&S food hall checkout staff is that they seem to think we have all day while they slowly pass the items across the scanner and then try to open up a conversation about the rest of our day. They are also instructed to enquire whether we want an M&S credit card; don’t they realise we’ve heard the spiel a hundred times already and are not interested?

I prefer the brisk efficiency of the Aldi checkouts [not having been in a Lidl for twelve years]. If you organise the purchases on the checkout conveyor belt and then park the trolley alongside the discharge point all the shopping will end up in the trolley with little effort required so you can pay up and be on your way. Aldi print the barcode on all sides of their own label products so it does not matter how you place them on the belt they will scan without manual intervention. Like their near-namesake: vorsprung durch technik.

Having the barcode on all sides is an intelligent solution that could be adopted by all supermarkets. It would mean that each of the original barcodes would have to be covered in the event of a price reduction.

I have bought large objects from DIY shops and the barcode is often in the most inconvenient place for scanning.

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While the hourly rate at shops like Aldi and Lidl is probably above average for the sector [including corner shops and convenience stores] I think the pressure is higher and the overall staffing ratio and longer shifts mean that staff are kept busy continuously for long periods with no slack time. This appeals to some people and provides a higher weekly wage, but it might no be so popular with indigenous employees used to a different regime. Low productivity is the UK’s persistent handicap and if we are to succeed in the global market place after Brexit it must be raised.

Malcolm – The big drawback for us to shopping for more items at M&S is the absence of parking facilities. When in Norwich we can only buy what we can physically carry half a mile to a city centre multi-storey car park, so bottles of wine and boxes of washing powder are out of the question if we have filled a trolley with fresh food, milk and fruit juices. The food hall is also cramped and congested. Half a mile in the other direction is a superb Sainsbury’s with a large car park, big trolleys, wide aisles, and a far better range of products, and while the products might not be quite so sophisticated as in M&S they are of equivalent quality and usually more to our taste – but that’s probably a matter of what we have got used to. And if we are looking for something more exciting then there are two excellent Waitrose stores on the way home.

I feel that with the main weekly shopping it is not one thing or the other [price -v- experience] that counts but the overall package. At the big Tesco not far from where we live there are ancillary services so we can get keys cut, shoes repaired, dry cleaning done, and have bedding and duvets laundered, as well as foreign currency, small electrical appliances, photographic services, pharmacy, lots of household items, more pet foods, and click-&-collect. For others, the bigger traditional supermarkets also offer cigarette and tobacco products, lottery tickets, mobile phone services, a more useful range of trolleys, mobility aids, cafeteria, lavatories, cash machines, and fresh meat, fish and bakery products prepared to personal requirements. I don’t foresee M&S with its mainly city and town centre-based branches matching that.

We should not overlook the role of the ‘pound shops’ which are liked by people on fixed weekly budgets even if the actual unit price is slightly higher than in other stores.

I wonder how productivity in supermarkets can be improved without the danger of increasing workers’ stress in a sector where this is reputed to be a problem already. I wonder if some of the supermarkets have been too accommodating for their customers, with many large supermarkets open very long hours and in some cases 24 hours a day. I don’t know what goes on in store rooms and offices but most of the staff I see on the shop floor look busier than say ten years ago.

Wavechange – with regards to bar codes and price alterations, is it not just a case of altering the software in the scanning and till systems – which can be done from head office – so that the new price will be registered against the existing bar code? I know that in Tescos, Sainsbury’s, etc they over-label the bar code with a yellow or red ‘reduced’ label for sales-floor mark-downs for clearance purposes but I don’t think Aldi and Lidl operate in that way.

We are lucky as the car park is adjacent to M&S. Before the local one opened we used the one in the nearby town that had virtually no car parkig. They had a collect service where you left your shopping with the store and broght your car round to a collection point; they then loaded it for you. It worked very well.

I have not really studied this, John, but in the larger Tesco that I mentioned, the staff clearly had the opportunity to choose the price reduction. I remember a customer waiting for a price to be reduced, looking at the reduced price in disgust and the assistant putting a new sticker with a lower price on top of the previous one. On another occasion in the same shop, an assistant asked a customer ‘what price would you like?’. I’m not suggesting that this is normal practice. I check price reductions because if an original barcode is not obscured you might be charged the full price.

At one time our Waitrose sometimes gave multi-buy discounts even where goods were heavily reduced, so the store actually paid you to take goods away. They finally sorted out this technical glitch but my friend who likes shopping showed me several examples.

Caviar’s rather nice 🙂

I have not seen the magazine yet but looking at it online, I see that it lacks the explanation of the table that we have discussed above.

I had noticed this too. I presume that it is easier and safer to change the signs. My favourite Tesco sign suspended from the roof was ‘Stationary’ in a large Tesco Extra. I would have like to said it had moved but it was just removed.

Must have been the area for stock they couldn’t shift. 😒

🙂

I imagine they like you to have to walk all round the store to find the area you need. That way you’ll inevitably, on your travels, pick up items you didn’t realise you needed.

You are lucky to have all these options available, Alfa.

We only have Sainsbury’s, Tesco, small Waitrose and Lidl within reasonable shopping distance but I have been in the others occasionally.

We can get Asda delivered which I do about once a year when my favourite tipple is on very special offer. I went in an Aldi last year and thought the place was a mess. Lidl are ok for odds and ends but have tried their fruit and veg a few times and it has been tasteless and I don’t go in there much since they started operating a silly parking scheme. Waitrose is too small to be very useful although larger ones are a bit further away. No M&S, Morrisons, Asda, Iceland or Aldi within reasonable distance.