Asda is to scrap buy-one-get-one-free offers as price competition intensifies between the big supermarkets.

Britain’s second-largest grocer yesterday said that it would cut 5,000 prices by Easter on top of the 7,500 price cuts it announced last month. It said that it would end buy-one-get-one-free (bogof) deals as it intended to win customers’ trust by “not baffling them with vague claims”.

The Advertising Standards Authority, the regulator, has received a flurry of supermarket complaints. The “big four” grocers, desperate to prove their value credentials in the downturn, have released a wave of price-comparison adverts, provoking complaints that these are unfounded or unclear.

Which?, the consumer campaign group, said recently that supermarkets were raising prices so they could then introduce eye-catching half-price or bogof offers, in breach of regulations.

Tesco last night responded to Asda’s initiative by pricing 300 frozen food items at £1. Analysts have cast doubt on whether such promotions represent a general reduction in price levels, as food retailers’ top line sales figures are in most cases outstripping volume increases, implying they have successfully raised prices.

Darren Blackhurst, Asda’s chief merchandising officer, who is in charge of the supply chain, said: “With the country in recession, we need to do all we can to lower the cost of the weekly shop.”

Mr Blackhurst revealed last week that he had reduced the number of product lines Asda stocks to cut costs and so enable it to lower prices. “In certain ranges we are taking 20 to 30 per cent of our [product lines] out, freeing up space for key value items,” he told The Grocer, the trade magazine.

Andy Bond, chief executive of Asda, said: “We’re engaging with our customers in a transparent way to ensure the products we sell and the prices we charge meet their needs in these difficult times.”

Richard Perks, director of retail research at Mintel, the market analyst, said that the move showed the influence of Wal-Mart, Asda’s parent company. He said: “It is really going back to Wal-Mart’s roots of everyday low pricing. You don’t go for the promotions; you just make sure your prices are as low as possible every time.

“You need to be a relatively big business to do it but it is a strategy that works.”

Asda had been drawn into a fierce fight for market share with Wm Morrison. The two Yorkshire-based rivals are perceived as the most price-com-petitive of the big four and have seen their sales rise much faster than Tesco and Sainsbury’s.

Morrisons’ share of the grocery market was static at 11.9 per cent in January, while Asda’s rose to 17.8 per cent, according to industry figures. Tesco’s share declined from 30.6 per cent to 30.3 per cent, while Sainsbury’s was flat at 16.6 per cent.

Asda was responding to gains made by Morrisons over Christmas, when it was the fastest growing of the leading supermarkets.

Tesco’s promotions on frozen food are intended to fit in with consumers’ shopping habits during the downturn.

Richard Brasher, Tesco’s commercial and marketing director, said: “Millions of customers are right now worrying about how they are going to make this month’s pay packet stretch until the next one arrives. The answer for an increasing number is to stock up the freezer.”

There has been speculation that supermarket discounts are timed to coincide with pay days.

Asda’s attempts to reduce its product lines come as supermarkets heap pressure on suppliers to pass on falling commodity prices. But some suppliers complain that many foodstuffs, such as chicken and cheese, remain more expensive than last year and that the weakness of the pound will push their costs up still further.

This month Delhaize, a Belgian supermarket, removed several hundred Unilever products in a dispute over price – a sign that negotiations between retailers and their suppliers are becoming increasingly fraught.

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