Tesco vs Asda price ads bannedWatchdog orders Tesco to withdraw ad campaign
30 June 2010
Supermarket giant Tesco has been told to drop price-comparison adverts that claimed it was cheaper than rival Asda.
Advertising watchdog ASA ruled that the campaign, which included a national press advert and a television commercial claiming shopping at Tesco was cheaper for 'over one million customers', was ambiguous and made misleading claims. It said that the adverts must not appear again in their current form.
Asda's complaints
Among Asda's complaints were that its rival misleadingly listed more than 31,000 lines on Tesco.com but only matched around 12,000 of those lines with Asda, in some cases matched just one item in a basket and compared its in-store prices with Asda's online prices.
In its defence, Tesco said the claims related to the items bought by customers, not the items stocked.
The company said more than half of all the individual items bought in all the Tesco transactions were matched with items at Asda.
Price comparisons not clear
But the ASA said: 'Because it was not clear whether they were comparing half of the contents of each basket, half the total purchases or half of the lines they stocked we concluded the claim was ambiguous and therefore misleading.'
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