Ad description
A website, www.lovesofas.co.uk, for a sofa retailer stated "The UK's largest sofa website ...".
Issue
The complainant challenged whether the claim "The UK's largest sofa website" was misleading and could be substantiated.
Response
Love Sofas provided a list of all the sofas that could be purchased from their website. They compared that list against the sofas sold by their three major online competitors and provided individual lists and screenshots of their competitors' ranges.
Love Sofas' list illustrated that they offered consumers a range of 345 different sofas, compared to 251 from the competitor with the second largest range after Love Sofas.
Love Sofas considered that the lists illustrated that their website offered consumers a larger range of sofas to select from than any other online sofa retailer. Furthermore, they commented that their range of sofas were available in a wide variety of patterns, colours and configurations in comparison.
Assessment
Not upheld
The ASA considered that the claim "The UK's largest sofa website" referred to their selection of sofas available for online purchase.
We noted that the documentation provided by Love Sofas illustrated the number of unique sofas they and their three major competitors sold via their websites and that it showed that Love Sofas' website offered the highest number.
Therefore, we concluded that because Love Sofas had shown that they offered consumers the largest selection of sofa designs available for online purchase, the claim that they were the "UK's largest sofa website" was unlikely to mislead.
We investigated the ad under CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 3.1 Marketing communications must not materially mislead or be likely to do so. (Misleading advertising), 3.7 3.7 Before distributing or submitting a marketing communication for publication, marketers must hold documentary evidence to prove claims that consumers are likely to regard as objective and that are capable of objective substantiation. The ASA may regard claims as misleading in the absence of adequate substantiation. (Substantiation) and 3.38 3.38 Marketing communications that include a comparison with an unidentifiable competitor must not mislead, or be likely to mislead, the consumer. The elements of the comparison must not be selected to give the marketer an unrepresentative advantage. (Other Comparisons), but did not find it in breach.
Action
No further action necessary.
