Trolley Trends Week 3: Tesco’s price competitiveness hit by lower promotional activity

Research evidence excerpt

Trolley Trends Week 3: Tesco’s price competitiveness hit by lower promotional activity

J P M O R G A N Europe Credit Research

21 May 2026

Trolley Trends

Week 3: Tesco’s price competitiveness hit by lower

promotional activity

Europe Corporate Credit - Retailing Asda retained its lead in our Trolley Trends scorecard with its composite

& Consumer Products

score of 96.4 (/100), reflecting price leadership across food and non-food

items, good availability and a low promotional rate. By contrast, Tesco’s Neill Keaney AC

basket cost jumped by 5.4%. This was driven by a significant decline in (44 20) 7134-2002

neill.keaney@jpmorgan.com

promotional activity (both branded and own-label) which saw the market J.P. Morgan Securities plc

leader’s price competitiveness deteriorate significantly week-on-week. Alice Rossini, CFA

Sainsbury’s and Morrisons both screened cheaper and closed the gap to Asda. (44 20) 7134 0478

Morrisons fulfilment score also improved markedly this week, with delivery alice.rossini@jpmorgan.com

costs down and slot availability up. However, availability and promotional J.P. Morgan Securities plc

intensity offset these factors meaning it remains behind the rest of the Big European Food Retail

Four and Ocado in composite score terms. While we would caution against Borja Olcese

reading too much into our inflation estimate given our still small sample size (34-91) 516-1511

and the impact of promotions on any given week’s average trolley cost, it borja.olcese@jpmorgan.com

certainly does not appear to be decelerating: own-label fresh and chilled J.P. Morgan Securities plc

items, which under-index to promotional activity relative to the overall Palak Garg

basket, have shown inflation of 1.6% over the last eight weeks. That said, even (91-22) 6157-5102