Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, whether he has made an assessment of the potential impact of supermarket loyalty scheme pricing models on consumers.

The Department has not made such an assessment. However, in 2024, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) undertook a review into loyalty pricing in the groceries sector, publishing their findings in November 2024. The CMA found that shoppers who are members of a loyalty scheme can almost always make a genuine saving on the usual price by buying loyalty priced products. This should give shoppers confidence that they are not being treated unfairly. The CMA analysed around 50,000 grocery products on a loyalty price promotion and found very little evidence of supermarkets inflating their ‘usual’ prices to make loyalty promotions seem like a better deal.

In addition, shoppers without a loyalty scheme membership are generally paying the same price during the loyalty price promotion as they do in the weeks both before and after loyalty price promotions. However, the CMA found several loyalty priced products which were significantly more expensive than the cheapest price available at other supermarkets at that time, so there is value in shopping around.