This is why Aldi and Lidl are REALLY winning Britain’s supermarket wars… and it’s not just about the price
Supermarkets are deploying a range of increasingly technical and extreme tactics to pull punters in and keep them coming back for more
SUPERMARKETS have become super competitive business thanks to the rise of budget chains Aldi and Lidl.
Now our biggest shops are deploying a range of increasingly technical and extreme tactics to pull punters in and keep them coming back for more.
Asda is pinning its hopes on a £350,000 machine that listens to avocados to see if they're ripe, Sainsbury's is bulk brewing Prosecco in Italy to hook upmarket customers, Iceland is experimenting in the luxury market spending 18 months developing £10 desserts, while Tesco is investing in the world's hottest chillis to get more social media video coverage.
Meanwhile, over at Morrisons they are using cutting edge science to breed cattle that makes the most meat on the least feed – and ultrasound scans tell them if their beef has the perfect marbling.
Wifi monitoring and facial recognition software also allows the supermarkets to work out who is buying what and they even monitor customer's movements around the stores.
The shopping wars come following Tesco's recent and historically huge losses, with Sainsbury's and Asda both suffering declining sales too thanks to Aldi and Lidl both DOUBLING their market share.
Here we look at the secret tactics driving the supermarket wars...
MOST READ IN LIVING
Avocados
Avocados are now more popular than oranges with sales up 25 per cent in the last year.
Now supermarkets are competing to solve the ripeness problem.
Asda thinks it has after investing £350,000 in a machine that hits avocados, listens to the noise they make and sorts them into three categories.
Green means ripe, amber means will be ripe in a couple of days and pink means ready in five days.
Beef
Morrisons have combined modern science and farmers to find breeding bulls that convert the minimum amount of food into the maximum amount of meat.
They use tags and scales to measure the amount each bull eats then weigh them to find which ones have gained the most weight but have eaten the least.
The cows that produce the most meat on 2kg less feed a day are kept for breeding – if they pass the ultrasound test.
The ultrasound tests sees scientists scan the animals to look at the amount of meat and the amount of fat. Around six per cent marbling is perfect.
Affordable luxury
Taking their lead from the success of champagne and lobster at Lidl and Aldi, Iceland has decided to offer customers affordable luxury.
In the summer of 2015 they started developing a £10 chocolate igloo handcrafted dessert for Christmas 2016. They hoped to steal a quarter of the market for luxury desserts and become the number one seller of luxury desserts.
They were successful flogging every one of the £10 treats and earning themselves 22.4 per cent of the market share.
The second biggest seller of luxury desserts was Tesco – who are ten times bigger.
Prosecco
Customer loyalty has dipped in recent years – but Sainsbury's has found their Prosecco keeps them coming back.
Unlike champagne, the affordable fizz is dominated by supermarket brands rather than big names like Moet, Bollinger and Perriet Jouet. Tesco and Lidl's most popular Prosecco costs around £5-7 while Sainsbury's customer favourite is £10.
However, to maintain brand loyalty the supermarkets have to make sure their prosecco tastes the same every year whatever the vintage.
Sainsbury's are especially keen. They despatch wine manager Lisa Rogerson to Italy to measure the sugar in this year's grapes before they are used.
Then the huge vats of wine are tasted, before a blend of the different batches is chosen to measure up to last year’s flavour. Only then is the fizz added.
Happily costumers couldn't tell the difference between the 2015 vintage and the 2016 vintage and 23rd Dec 2016 Sainsbury's sold two bottles a second.
In the week between Christmas and New Year it was the biggest selling product across the country.
Cutting back
In 2015 Tesco reported the biggest losses in British retail history. Previously one in every eight pounds spent in British shops went to Tesco.
While Tesco took a battering, Aldi leapt from the 10th biggest supermarket in the UK to the 5th. Previously Tesco stocked 90,000 products, its strategy to stop costumers ever needing another store.
At its peak Tesco stocked 28 types of ketchup while Aldi sold one, similarly they sold 283 kinds of coffee while Lidl stocked just 24.
It comes after research into "Ego Depletion" showed that people can only make so many decisions a day and would rather choose nothing than use up their decision-making quota.
Social media
The fastest growing group of grocery shoppers is the 16-35 age group and a huge 95 per cent of them use social media.
Marks and Spencer tweet to the biggest audience while Lidl and Aldi reach 1.5m on FB.
Now Tesco is mass producing the world’s hottest chillis the Carolina Reaper in the hope videos of customers eating them will be shared online.
The Carolina Reaper measures 1.41million on the scoville scale – a jalapeno is around 5,000.
Customer data
Firms have been using data from loyalty cards and debit cards for years, but now they've got new tricks.
Supermarkets are installing hotspots in their supermarkets so that when your mobile phone connects to them, they can pin point your movements around the shop and see which offers you look at most and how long you are in store for.
They are also trialling facial recognition software on shelves which will tell them the age and sex of customers looking at products and allow them to adjust accordingly marketing and advertisements accordingly.
Sales data is fed back to supermarket bosses every two hours so they can adjust prices, or change advertising slots.
Waste
Supermarkets have been demonised over food waste and making customers buy more than they need. Now they are trying to turn that image around.
Asda and Tesco are selling wonky veg at a discount while Morrison’s and Waitrose are giving old food to the homeless.
Another tactic sees apps to help reduce waste.
Customer Lisa Edwards and her family are trialling and app that is linked to a camera in her fridge. Every time the door is opened it takes a picture and saves it so while she's shopping she can log in and see what she needs.
There is a camera for the fridge contents and another for the fridge door.
Another app she is trialling sees her weigh waste and find out how much it has cost her, encouraging the family to use up leftovers.
She reckons the weighing app saves £10 a week, adding up to £500 a year.
Supermarket Secrets airs on Monday, June 19 on BBC1 at 9pm