BOSTON — For the second year in a row, Dollar General has topped Kantar Retail’s opening price point survey, narrowly beating out Wal-Mart Stores.
The OPP survey, now in its third year, determines how select retailers meet the grocery and consumables needs of shoppers looking for the lowest shelf prices. According to Kantar, Dollar General’s total basket was the least expensive among retailers surveyed, edging out Wal-Mart Supercenter’s basket by 12 cents.
This represents a substantial closing of the gap in the survey conducted last year, when Dollar General’s basket of OPP items was 18% cheaper than Wal-Mart’s. The edible grocery and HBC sub-baskets drove Dollar General’s basket lead over Wal-Mart. And while Wal-Mart’s basket came in a close second overall, it recorded the least expensive non-edible sub-basket by a sizable margin, Kantar added.
Conversely, Target’s total OPP basket was the most expensive, registering 48% more than Dollar General’s basket and 12% greater than the next highest-priced competitor, Aldi.
“Retailers’ use of temporary price cuts did not affect the overall outcome of our survey. For the most part, all the retailers in this study achieved their OPP positions through everyday pricing. Private labels, however, had a more significant impact than in previous iterations of this study, as the retailer with the least expensive sub-basket achieved that standing primarily through private labels in each case,” Leon Nicholas, Kantar Retail senior vice president, said.
In this year’s study, Kantar Retail selected 21 categories across the edible grocery, non-edible grocery, and HBA segments. In a change from last year, Walgreens was left out of the study due to a lack of opening price point competitiveness in previous years; all other retailers from last year were included. All data was collected in the southern New Hampshire/northern Massachusetts area in October 2013. For each retailer, Kantar Retail assessed the lowest price point available to the shopper in that category (excluding trial sizes).
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