Using ketchup to capture sales

Combine tomatoes, vinegar, high-fructose corn syrup and salt and what do you get? Ketchup, of course, but also the makings of an early-summer pricing battle involving a staple of summer cookouts. Target featured a 40-ounce squeeze bottle of Heinz brand ketchup in its circular this week for $1.59. That’s quite an aggressive price and would have been a good deal for shoppers except for the fact that Walmart decided it needed to reassert its pricing image and would use the Heinz brand to do so. As a result, Walmart marked down the 40-ounce Heinz to just $1 from its regular price of $2.42, as part of its price rollback campaign touted in promotional materials as involving, “thousands of rollbacks throughout the store.” Fortunately for margins at Target, as well as Walmart, most of the items featured in the rollback program are not subject to such extreme reductions.