John Lewis is bringing back its ‘Never Knowingly Undersold’ price matching initiative after retiring it over two years ago.

The retailer plans to bring the tagline back in a “reimagined” format, it said today, redesigning it for how “customers shop today”.

Following a multimillion pound investment, the Never Knowingly Undersold brand promise will now be available in-store and online, supported by AI technology.

From Monday (9 September), customers will be able to price-match products from 25 major UK retailers, including Argos and Currys.

“This is a significant and critical milestone in the modernisation of our John Lewis customer proposition,” says John Lewis CEO Nish Kankiwala.

The says that in a recent survey of 5,000 customers, three-quarters said a modernised version of Never Knowingly Undersold would “improve their feeling of getting good value for money”.

To coincide with the comeback, a new brand campaign featuring actor Samantha Morton and music artist Laura Mvula will be launched nationally on 19 September.

John Lewis to retire ‘Never Knowingly Undersold’ price promise this summer

John Lewis offered the Never Knowingly Undersold brand promise for nearly a century before retiring it in 2022, saying at the time it was because customers had “changed how they shop”.

Instead, it decided to pump £500m into a new price pledge aimed at offering “quality at great value prices” amid the cost of living crisis.

The retailer claimed the price promise was “no longer enough to assure trust” because it applied to “fewer and fewer sales” as shopping moved increasingly online and the promise wasn’t applicable to online-only retailers.

The price pledge was originally put under strategic review in March 2020. At the time, John Lewis chairman Sharon White identified a need to “modernise” Never Knowingly Undersold, which was introduced in 1925, in favour of making value a key part of the brand.