John Lewis has seen an immediate response to the return of its Never Knowingly Undersold pledge with website and store sales picking up “aggressively.”
The department store group announced last month that it was bringing back the famous century old tagline that was axed by its former boss Pippa Wicks in 2022. As a result John Lewis has matched or dropped 30,000 prices since September 9.
The restoration of the price matching promise was followed by the launch of series of TV ads that started to air on September 19 with the first featuring a voiceover by the actor Samantha Morton and a reworking of Paul Simon’s I Know What I Know by the singer Laura Mvula.
John Lewis executive director Peter Ruis, who rejoined the business earlier this year, told Retail Week that since the ad launched the John Lewis website had drawn an extra 89,000 visits per day through natural rather than paid-for traffic
Ruis said: “These [things] always happen quickest online because people go straight online, and then they’ll take a little bit more time to get into the stores. But we’ve seen our best increases on store traffic and store sales in a year in the last three weeks.” The retailer’s YouGov ‘buzz’ score has also doubled, and value for money perception has improved.
Ruis said: “It’s three weeks, I don’t want to over-egg it. I think the point to make is it had an instant reaction that was way more aggressive than we expected, which I think plays to the underlying strength and love of this brand. We will measure this over the next six months and see what happens.”
Ruis has previously said he had begun working on bringing back the never knowingly undersold policy as far back as February, shortly after rejoining the staff-owned group. He said the removal of the price promise had led shoppers to lose faith they were getting the best value with John Lewis.
The update version of the pledge uses artificial intelligence tools to match prices both in-store and online for 25 competitors including Marks & Spencer, Boots, Currys, House of Fraser and, on technology only – Amazon
