Tesco’s advertising has been branded “misleading” after a string of questions and condemnation from the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA).
The retailers “real basket” campaign, which attacked rival Asda by comparing its own baskets of goods favourably and provoked a complaint from the Leeds-based supermarket, is "ambiguous" and "likely to mislead", according to the ASA after examining the television and press adverts.
The ASA ruled that the ads must not appear again in their current form as they did not make clear the differences between the products at the two chains and did not explain the basis of the comparison.
The ASA found that the exclusion of a number of items in each basket meant it was hard to discern whether the claim that Tesco’s baskets were cheaper was correct.
It said: "We considered they did not give consumers enough information to be able to make an informed choice about whether or not the comparison was useful for them, and the ads were therefore misleading.”
An on-screen footnote stated that only 251,445 were actually compared despite a prominent message claiming Tesco offered "1,187,000 baskets cheaper" than its rival.
A spokesperson for Asda hit back at Tesco in welcoming the ruling: “The ASA ruling proves what we've known all along; Tesco's “real baskets” aren't so real after all. Shoppers haven't been taken in by their claims either - a million more customers flocking to Asda in the last year shows they know who's really got the lowest prices."
Tesco's claim to be "Britain's biggest discounter" was also deemed "ambiguous and the basis of the comparison unclear" after being challenged by discounter Aldi.
Tesco said it was the "biggest discounter" in terms of volume of sales and market share, which the ASA agreed, but refused to accept offered lower prices overall or bigger discounts on some items as its had compared different brands.
A spokeswoman for Tesco said: "We are reassured that in its investigation of these complaints the ASA has not found anything fundamentally wrong with the substance of our message that more of our customers' matched baskets are cheaper at Tesco than they would have been at Asda.”
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