Co-op kicks off biggest value campaign with Aldi price match push

For the first time, the Co-op is set to price match Aldi on over 100 everyday essentials aimed at members shopping in store and online.

The move to price match takes the retailer’s investment in lowering prices to almost £170m over the past two years.

Devised by agency VCCP, the ‘Co-op Plot Twist’ campaign – part of the ‘Owned by you. Right by you.’ brand platform revealed in July – highlights the reduced prices of everyday essentials such as fresh fruit, milk, eggs and bread. The campaign will run across TV, VOD, social media, in-store and out-of-home, alongside other channels.

The value push is focused on supporting Co-op’s 6.2 million members, with a target to hit 8 million by 2030. The business expanded its membership by a fifth in the first half of its 2024 financial year. 

“Through our first-ever Aldi Price Match campaign, we’re celebrating the often overlooked fact that Co-op offers great value on everyday essentials – continuing to deliver our brand promise of doing right by our members,” says Mel Matson, marketing director of food and masterbrand at Co-op.

According to Matson, the aim of the initiative is to “demonstrate that there is no compromise in value, quality, or range when shopping” in convenience stores, especially as “price has often been viewed as a challenge in convenience shopping”.

Earlier in the year, Co-op announced plans to accelerate its convenience store growth by opening 75 new stores across the UK in 2025, alongside refurbishing 80 existing stores. Payment services, as well as parcel collection and returns, will also be added to some stores.

Asda drops Aldi and Lidl price match scheme

Not every retailer is adopting a similar approach to the Co-op. Asda dropped its Aldi and Lidl price match in January – 12 months after it was introduced – amid a return to its Rollback price promise and wider focus on its own offers.

“We’re focused on our own great Asda Prices not competitor comparisons,” an Asda spokesperson told Marketing Week at the time. “We’ve started 2025 as we mean to go on by cutting prices on thousands of products and there’s much more to come with Rollback.”

In February, Sainsbury’s cut the number of products covered by its Aldi price match campaign, despite becoming the first UK grocer to extend the price scheme to its convenience stores in the run up to Christmas 2024. Last month, Tesco also reportedly removed more than 100 items from its Aldi price match programme.

Asda was the first to price match against both Aldi and Lidl in January 2024, with over 400 products included in the initial range. At the time the scheme launched, Asda’s chief customer officer David Hills said the initiative sent “a strong message to provide that reassurance to our existing customers and also attract those customers across the grocery sphere to come to us”.

Morrisons followed suit a month later in February 2024, pledging to match either Aldi or Lidl, depending on which is cheaper.

Aldi itself has previously mocked its competitors for their price matching efforts.