SUPERMARKET giant Sainsbury’s pledged to extend its price matching scheme – as it revealed better-than-expected sales in the run-up to Christmas.

The UK’s third-biggest grocer lifted like-for-like sales excluding fuel by 2.1% in the 14 weeks to January 7. Customer transactions in the week before Christmas rose by 1.5m to a record 26m.

Sainsbury’s Brand Match scheme, which guarantees a coupon for customers if an identical basket of branded goods could be bought more cheaply in Asda or Tesco, will continue into 2012.