Which supermarket has the best advertising campaign?

July 2, 2010 - PRLog -- Brand Recruitment has recently conducted a survey to find out what consumers think about UK supermarkets' advertising campaigns.

The majority of those questioned regularly shopped in Tesco which is the number one supermarket according to market share.  Consumers regularly shopped in their chosen supermarket primarily because it is the closest supermarket to where they live. Does this mean that Tesco is the most accessible supermarket compared to others?

Coming a close second behind locality was the price of the products which received 25% of the votes. The third most popular reason for consumers to shop in a particular supermarket was the quality of the food which obtained 11%. This is interesting when you compare this outcome with the supermarket which came out on top of having the best advertising campaign. M&S whose strap line is ‘this is not just food, this is M&S food’ was voted to have the best advertising campaign by Brand Recruitment’s voters. Their whole advertising campaign surrounds the quality of their food so this seems a contradiction. This could imply that consumers aspire to shop in M&S but in reality convenience and price, especially in a recession, rule their pockets.

Waitrose’s recent advertising campaign reveals that the higher end supermarkets are having to adapt to consumers’ needs. Last week Waitrose won the Grand Prix at the Marketing Society Awards for their Essentials discount range launched in March last year. The new Waitrose campaign, which stars Delia Smith and Heston Blumenthal, features products which are on offer at Waitrose such as rhubarb crumble and wine. These advertisements have seen an increase in their sales. This also witnessed sales in rhubarb soar in other supermarkets such as Tesco, who publicly thanked ‘Waitrose for boosting [their] sales’ of rhubarb.

75% of the survey respondents thought that supermarket advertising campaigns were effective in their use of ‘sales data to claim it is the cheapest supermarket.’ Tesco and Asda are the protagonists in this. Their rival ‘price wars’ advertising campaigns have become notorious in the past few years.  According to Brand Recruitment’s survey, this is an effective marketing tool but some may argue that this is a desperate attempt on the supermarkets’ part and confuse their customers rather than encourage them to shop there.  Whatever critics may think about this type of campaign it seems to work and enhance sales and/or market share. Combined Tesco and Asda’s market share is a staggering 47.4% so they must be doing something right.

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