January 31st, 2023, Clifton Mark
Food inflation, an issue throughout 2022, reached a record rate of 13.5% in December. It’s no surprise, then, that food is one of the areas where inflation-squeezed consumers are looking to save. According to recent YouGov data, 45% of Britons say that, if their household budget is squeezed, they’ll cut back on non-essential food and other goods, with 18.7% saying they’ll spend less on essential groceries and 15.3% saying they’ll eat less. Moreover, 8.9% of respondents say that saving on groceries will be the first place they’ll try to reduce expenditure.
Eating in restaurants is the most common place where consumers will make cutting back a priority (19%). This suggests people will be buying more food at the supermarket and they’ll also be looking for the best deals when they do, with 8.9% saying they’ll make saving on groceries their first priority.
This means that supermarket are likely to make up more of the food budget as long as cost-of-living is rising and that value for money will be more important than ever when customers are choosing where to shop.
YouGov BrandIndex tracks more than 27000 brands worldwide along 16 brand health metrics, including 43 supermarkets in Great Britain. Value is net measure of how many consumers believe a brand provides good value for money. The following table shows the ten supermarkets with the highest value scores.
Top spot goes to Aldi, the German-owned discount retailer with a value score of 56, meaning that the percentage of respondents who said that Aldi provides good value minus the percentage of consumers who said that the shop provides poor value is 56. Aldi is followed by other discount supermarkets Lidl, Asda and Tesco. Waitrose, not visible on the chart, came in last of 43 with a score of -12.1.
Data from BrandIndex also suggests that value-for-money is a key consideration in times of rising living costs. Over the past year, the supermarkets with the top four Value scores all experienced significant growth in Current Customers, which is the proportion of consumers who say they’ve purchased from a supermarket in the past 30 days.
For the period from January 15, 2022 to January 14, 2023, Lidl showed strong growth in Current Customer moving from 22% to 34%. Aldi moved from 29% to 35%. Of the top five value-for-money supermarkets, Iceland had the lowest growth in customers, moving from 13% to 14%.
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Methodology: YouGov BrandIndex collects data on thousands of brands every day. A brand’s Value score is based on the question: “Which of the following brands do you think represents GOOD/POOR VALUE FOR MONEY?” Data is from surveys of adults aged 18 years and above residing in Great Britain from 1 January 2023 to 14 January 2023. Scores are based on a four-week moving average. Learn more about BrandIndex.
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