US Retail Price Monitor: No grocery price war yet despite price cuts talk

Research evidence excerpt

US Retail Price Monitor: No grocery price war yet despite price cuts talk

3 August 2026

US Retailing Broadlines & Hardlines

US Retail Price Monitor: No grocery price war yet despite price

cuts talk

Amid ongoing macro uncertainties, we update our consumables price tracker to monitor Zhihan Ma, CFA

+1 917 344 8303 retailers’ pricing actions and price gaps in real time. In this analysis, we collected pricing data

zhihan.ma@bernsteinsg.com for a basket of up to 34 CPG SKUs available across major retailers.

Jeremy Miles, CFA At the macro level, inflation ticked up to over 4% in May before moderating

+1 917 344 8370 somewhat in June 2026, led by energy inflation. Food inflation has been steady in jeremy.miles@bernsteinsg.com

the past year at ~3%. Meanwhile, tariff-impacted discretionary categories remain mostly

inflationary, although inflation has started to moderate in some categories as we start to lap

last year’s tariff-driven price increases.

Are we heading into a deflationary environment, now that more grocers and other

retailers have talked about price investments? Not quite. Across retail channels,

consumable prices increased by LSD-MSD% since March for a representative basket of

CPG products we track in measured channels. The mass / club channel remains the most

price competitive, with the widest price gap vs. convenience.

At the retailer level, Walmart holds price leadership position across consumable

products we track. We revamped our price tracker to compare pricing on identical SKUs

between each retailer pair (WMT vs. TGT, WMT vs. DG, and WMT vs. DLTR).

Target is on average 4% more expensive per item compared to Walmart across 34

identical SKUs we track. This is largely in line with TGT’s commentary that they manage