Lidl offers to drop Christmas prices by asking customers to TWEET about them
First up is lobster - with customers now having until 6pm tomorrow to drive down the cost from a starting price of £5.99
IN a bid to win the supermarket price war this Christmas, budget retailer Lidl will be cutting the price of four selected products throughout December - decided by customers through TWITTER.
The marketing ploy will see Lidl drop prices of the chosen Christmas products - but they will only ever get to half price.
In what is believed to be an industry first - the amount the prices will be dropped by depends on how much customers tweet about them on social media site Twitter.
The reduction will be capped at 50 per cent, meaning the minimum you can get them for is half price.
The first "Social Price Drop" product will be Lidl's Christmas lobster - which will have a starting price of £5.99, dropping to a possible maximum discounted cost of £2.99.
The driving down frenzy will go from 8am today until 6pm tomorrow, with each new product following the same pattern each week.
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Then every Wednesday the item's new price will be revealed with shoppers able to snap up the products at the reduced price in store the following Saturday.
The items on offer for the next couple of weeks include Serrano ham, and mini butter stollen, with the final product kept under wraps until Monday, December 12.
The Serrano ham normally retails at £29.99 but the supermarket recently introduced a mini version for just £12.99.
Meanwhile the mini butter stollen normally costs just £1.99.
Signs in store will also highlight the "Social Price Drop" promotion so it's clear where customers can bag their bargain.
What's on offer in the price drop?
Monday, November 21 8am - Tuesday, November 22 6pm Christmas lobster
Monday, November 28 8am - Tuesday, November 29 6pm Serrano ham
Monday, December 5 8am - Tuesday, December 6 6pm Mini butter stollen
Monday December 12 8am - Tuesday, December 13 6pm Yet to be revealed
Georgina Hall, head of communications at Lidl UK, said: "The Social Price Drop is a first for any supermarket in the UK, and we’re incredibly excited about giving our customers the power on Twitter to lower the price of some of our finest festive products.
"Christmas is a very expensive time of year for shoppers up and down the country and as a retailer at the heart of Britain’s communities, our ambition is to put the control back into the hands of consumers and save them even more in the run up to Christmas."
But not everyone has been impressed by the offer.
The supermarket has been slammed by some on Twitter for having too many terms and conditions attached to the deal, including that no more than 10 mentions from any one person will be counted and each new product has to attract a minimum of 1,500 mentions to warrant the full half price discount.
Harry Wallop posted: "Just some of the tortuous small print for the @LidlUK tweet-and-we'll-drop-price deal. I love their mini stollen, but not that much."
The move by Lidl comes amid a versatile period for supermarket prices. Last week at a press briefing, Tesco CEO Dave Lewis warned global suppliers not to artificially inflate their prices to exploit a fall in the pound.
In his first public comments since supplier Unilever tried to raise the cost of popular items such as Marmite due to a weaker currency, Lewis said price rises needed to be "justified".
He said: "The only thing we would ask of companies that are in that position is they don’t ask UK customers to pay inflated prices in order that their reporting currency is maintained. They don’t do that for countries outside of the UK."
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