Sainsbury’s loses loyalty card battle against Tesco as ASA dismisses ad complaint

Sainsbury’s has had its complaint against a Tesco ad, which claimed its Clubcard points are worth more than its rivals Nectar card points, rejected by the advertising watchdog.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) dismissed the complaint against a digital poster from Tesco that displayed a stack of sandwiches with the text: “Clubcard gives you more to spend on your groceries than Nectar. Stacks more”, and “Get more with Tesco Clubcard”.

The advert also featured text that read: “Clubcard points are worth 2x the value of Nectar points when converted for spend at Tesco and Sainsbury’s respectively”. A date of when the two schemes were compared was included.

Sainsbury’s reported the ad to the ASA, challenging whether the comparison between the Tesco Clubcard and Nectar loyalty card schemes was “misleading” and claimed the ad implied “overall superiority of Clubcard compared to Nectar”.

Tesco argued that consumers were to view the ad as making a specific comparison between the conversion value of its Clubcard points and Sainsbury’s Nectar points for spend on groceries.

The UK’s largest retailer also argued that a supermarket loyalty scheme’s benefits can be categorised into three areas: savings on the price of products at the point of purchase; collection of points from purchasing items from the retailer or their collection partners; and spend of points when converting them to money for spend with the retailer or their reward partners.

Tesco said that the qualification clarified that it was the like-for-like standard conversion value for spend of points that was being compared, and this overall message was “clear” when presented to consumers. The supermarket added that it had since amended the advert to add further clarification.

The ASA ruled that Sainsbury’s complaint will not be upheld, and declared “no further action” would be taken.

The regulatory body said: “Despite the similarities between the loyalty card schemes, each scheme also had its own unique features.

“However, we considered consumers were unlikely to interpret the claims to be of overall superiority across all features of schemes because of how they were presented in the context of the ads.”

The rivalry between the two supermarkets stepped up last week as Tesco revealed it was trialling personalised Clubcard prices for its members – something Sainsbury’s has had on offer for its Nectar members since October 2023.

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