If ever a board action was as strongly questioned as the casting aside of a retailer’s most vital USP, then it was the one taken by the John Lewis Partnership (JLP) board to drop the use of its legendary Never Knowingly Undersold (NKU) promise.
It had been key for nearly 100 years as a pledge to JLP customers that it would match the selling price offered by any other retailer that offered the same product for less.
Whilst everyone accepts that the world had moved on apace since John Spedan Lewis’ day, including the emergence and rapid growth in online retailing, to drop the NKU mantra seemed, to many, to be suicidal at a time when just about everything that JLP touched felt somewhat short of the mark.
Well, NKU is back. This time refreshed with the promise that JLP will price match in-store as per the original pledge and now also online with a total of 25 retailers including, Amazon on tech products, AO, and M&S to bring it up to date.
To achieve this, JLP will leverage AI to price-check its competitors and to match them.
Peter Ruis, executive director of John Lewis, commented: “We are reimagining Never Knowingly Undersold for how customers shop today—offering great quality, service, and prices in-store and online—and re-starting the conversation as to what it means to Live Knowingly in the 21st century.”
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