Tesco rapped for 'misleading' ads

Adverts comparing the cost of shopping at Tesco with two other supermarkets were misleading, the advertising watchdog said

Adverts comparing the cost of shopping at Tesco with two other supermarket chains were misleading, the advertising watchdog has said.

The price-comparison adverts on TV and in the national press did not give customers enough information to make an informed choice, were "ambiguous", and "likely to mislead" or "misleading", the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said.

The watchdog partially upheld complaints from Asda, Aldi and members of the public about the adverts and ruled they must not appear again in their current form.

The TV advert comparing "real baskets at Tesco" with those at Asda 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.

It also found the exclusion of a number of items in each basket meant it was impossible to determine whether the overall claim for the number of baskets which were cheaper at Tesco was accurate.

"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," the ASA said.

But a Tesco spokeswoman 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.

"We welcome the further detailed guidance the ASA has provided on the execution of the adverts as this will make them even clearer for customers going forward."

The ASA also found that while text in a prominent red circle claimed Tesco offered "1,187,000 baskets cheaper" and Asda just 645,000, Tesco's own on-screen text and footnote stated only about a tenth of the combined total number of baskets (215,445) were actually compared.

The ASA said customers "would inevitably set more store by a claim based on a comparison of close to two million baskets than one based on a comparison of a tenth of that number" and the adverts were therefore "misleading".