The war goes on says Woolies

THE head of Woolworths supermarkets says the grocery price wars are here to stay, and the nation’s biggest chain is squarely focused on lowering prices.

Speaking at an industry conference in Melbourne yesterday, Woolworths Supermarkets managing director Claire Peters, pictured, said “good pricing remains central to our plans”.

Ms Peters said Woolworths would be injecting some “rationality” back into pricing of some groceries as it reacted to changes at Coles and tweaked its own offering.

But the price war is still ongoing, with Woolworths extending its “price drop” campaign to 350 items since the start of the year. In recent years the prices of 4500 items have been cut.

Ms Peters joined Woolworths last year as its new supermarket head, coming from British goliath Tesco, and arrived at a time when Woolworths was fighting back against arch rival Coles in terms of boosting sales.

It has invested more than $1 billion in lowering its prices, which has helped fuel its competitive edge.

Woolworths has also put a greater focus on customer satisfaction under chief executive Brad Banducci — a strategy that Ms Peters confirmed was helping push sales higher.

Ms Peters said success was “reaped when we have the customer at the heart of our conditions”.

“Happy customers spend twice as much with us,” she said.

“They spend twice as fast and the share of wallet grows.”

Ms Peters said shoppers were looking for a “frictionless” experience, which meant making everything around the group’s stores more seamless through initiatives such as new digital payment platforms.

Woolworths was aiming to have a tailored offering for all communities when it came to range, she said.

“One size fits all is no longer good enough,” Ms Peters said.