Visits to John Lewis’ website and store sales have risen since the reintroduction of the Never Knowingly Undersold price promise and associated ad, Retail Week can reveal.

John Lewis Never Knowingly Undersold tagline, 2024

Source: John Lewis Partnership

The reintroduction of the Never Knowingly Undersold pledge has boosted footfall at John Lewis

John Lewis announced the return of the price pledge early last month and followed it up with the first of a golden quarter series of ads that started to air on September 19.

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

The John Lewis website has been outperforming the IMRG index. 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.”

John Lewis has matched or dropped 30,000 prices since September 9.

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