Shufersal launched another public relations campaign: lowers the price of more than 300 products

Shufersal launched another public relations campaign, designed to disguise the fact that Israel's largest retail chain is also the most expensive of the discount chains: earlier on Sunday, Shufersal distributed a press release under the title "Shufersal takes a significant step: launches a unique program and lowers the price of more than 300 selected products for six months." But you won't find big consumer news here.
Shufersal announced a fixed catalog price of about 20% lower for a variety of products. The discount will only apply at Shufersal Deal branches and the Shufersal online website and not at Shufersal My and Shufersal Express branches. A significant part of the products on the list are private label products, whose prices have been raised in recent months.
In addition, the list distributed to the media includes only about 100 products. In response to a request to receive the full list, Shufersal said that the partial list reflects the full list, but since the chain markets the products in different weights, flavors or scents, the announcement talks about about 300 different SKUs. For example, washing powder sold in packages of several sizes was calculated as a number of products.
From a sample test we performed, which compared the new prices of Shufersal Deal and Shufersal Online to the prices of the same products at Rami Levy Internet Marketing and Victory Online, it emerged that in most cases it is about aligning with the competitors. From the beginning Shufersal's products were higher than those of its competitors. Now in some of the products on the list it offers a similar price and in others a lower or slightly higher price than the tested competitors.
It is likely that Shufersal realizes that there will be no real news in the new prices that it published, since within a few hours its competitors will compare the prices of the same products and even lower a few tens of pennies - just to say that they are lower.
It seems that Shufersal's "significant step" is mainly due to Shufersal's reluctance to end the public relations campaign it has been running for the past few months to protect consumers from price increases. After giving in to Tnuva and approving the new price list for some of the products, and in light of the understanding that with Strauss joining the list of companies raising Shufersal prices, it will not be able to continue the fight - because its customers will buy from other chains - Shufersal had to show the public that it is still fighting for it.
Positive PR is very important to Shufersal, which plays in the market of consumers with less disposable income who are more looking for the cheapest prices, while it - unlike Rami Levy, Victory and others - has never been a real price player and is not at all sure that it can be.
For months Shufersal has been losing market shares to its competitors and its sales in the same stores are on a downward trend. All this before the launch of Carrefour under the management of a former Shufersal executive, Uri Kilstein, who is going to make it difficult for them with a private label with a French fragrance and floor prices.