Introduction
In the UK’s competitive grocery landscape, the battle between national brands and private label products is more intense than ever. Supermarkets like Tesco, ASDA, and Sainsbury’s are constantly adjusting prices to promote their own-label SKUs while offering selective discounts on big-name brands.
Actowiz Solutions leverages AI-powered web scraping to monitor, analyze, and benchmark these pricing shifts—helping CPG manufacturers and retailers decode pricing strategy, margin war zones, and loyalty levers.
Why Brand vs Private Label Monitoring Matters
- Private labels offer up to 40% better margins for retailers
- Branded goods depend on consistent visibility & competitive pricing
- Consumers often substitute based on small price gaps
AI-driven analytics can uncover how often private labels undercut brands, which categories face the most price wars, and where promotions favor in-house SKUs.
AI Scraping Workflow by Actowiz
1. Product Pairing Engine
Our proprietary ML model matches branded SKUs with their closest private label alternatives (e.g., Walkers Salted Crisps vs Tesco Salted Potato Snacks).
2. Multi-Site Scraping
Hourly scraping of product pages, search listings, and category filters from Tesco, ASDA, and Sainsbury’s across multiple regions.
3. Price Gap Analysis
The AI models generate SKU-level pricing data, availability insights, discount timelines, and basket share probability.
Use Cases for Retailers & FMCG Brands
✅ Brand Managers
Identify categories with the highest undercutting and protect key SKUs with loyalty points, bundles, or limited-time offers.
✅ Private Label Teams
Study how pricing elasticity of brands varies by geography—target categories where switching likelihood is highest.
✅ Pricing Teams
Evaluate when to push price increases for branded SKUs without losing to private label substitution.
✅ Retail Buyers
Benchmark how each retailer positions their private label differently—optimize vendor negotiations and merchandising mix.
Visualization Example
📊 Bar Chart: Average Price Gap Across Categories (Snacks, Beverages, Dairy, Bakery) between Tesco Brand vs Tesco PL
📉 Line Graph: Weekly Discount Frequency – Branded vs Private Label SKUs at ASDA
Real Business Impact
💡 A leading dairy brand used Actowiz’s insights to detect 27% deeper price cuts on private-label milk at Sainsbury’s in Q1 2025—triggering a promotional alignment strategy that retained 9.4% of its market share.
💡 A household cleaning brand optimized its pricing strategy by region—using AI alerts when Tesco launched in-store coupons for its private label rival, preventing sales cannibalization.
Conclusion
In the age of rising inflation and price-sensitive shoppers, staying ahead of private label competition is critical for FMCG survival. Actowiz Solutions enables data-driven pricing intelligence by continuously comparing branded vs in-house alternatives across the UK’s top retailers.
