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.

Sample Data Extracted

• Tesco – Snacks:

• Branded Product: Walkers Salted 150g – £1.95

• Private Label: Tesco Salted Crisps 150g – £1.29

• Price Gap: £0.66

• Brand Discount: 10%

• PL Promo Status: No Promo
  
  

• ASDA – Beverages:

• Branded Product: Coca-Cola Zero 2L – £2.00

• Private Label: ASDA Cola Zero 2L – £1.20

• Price Gap: £0.80

• Brand Discount: 0%

• PL Promo Status: Rollback Offer
  
  

• Sainsbury’s – Pasta:

• Branded Product: Barilla Penne 500g – £1.85

• Private Label: Sainsbury’s Penne 500g – £1.05

• Price Gap: £0.80

• Brand Discount: 15%

• PL Promo Status: Nectar Price

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.

AI Feature Highlights

• NLP Classification to group SKUs by product hierarchy

• Time-Series Discount Tracking

• Shelf Price vs Basket Price Comparison

• Competitor Strategy Alerting System

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.

Ethical Scraping Compliance

• Geo-specific proxies for local store data

• Adheres to UK GDPR and data protection laws

• Transparent logging and throttled request intervals

📌 Want to uncover how private labels are undercutting your brand in real time?

Contact Us Today!

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.

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