Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
The Great Flapjack Scandal at Sainsburys
The local Sainsbury is so full of BOGOFs (buy one get one free) and other, often specious, "OFFERS" that one could be forgiven for thinking you could come out of the store with more money than you went in with.
So much of their merchandising – AKA confusion marketing – seems aimed at disguising higher prices and frustrating price comparisons.
The best example of this I've seen is their flapjacks, near the far corner of the store. These used to be priced at £1 for six slices, in a plastic tray.
The company has managed to hold the price at £1 but, there's a big but: the contents are dramatically reduced. Where once there were six slices, now there are only three.
In effect, the price is nearly doubled.
In order to help disguise the extent of the value reduction, the three, slightly larger slices are now separated in a redesigned tray that features two ridges that space out the slices more widely. Less contents, more packaging, same price. Does this amount to deceit?
More generally, weights & measures (that aid price comparisons) on most products are as hard to find as ever, often in tiny print and/or are deeply hidden.
Tags for Forum Posts: Sainsburys, comparison, confusion, flapjacks, marketing, price
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
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Yes, regulation and of course the insistance that Sunday be kept mostly shopping free. The profit margins are lower and therefore Tesco & Co. stay away. Plus Germans wouldn't eat a lot of the stuff you eat.
We've been all through these points before and you all get annoyed when I point them out. But let me mention just one. On a recent trip to the UK, the first person I encountered, sat on a train next to me, was a man in his late 60s eating a bag of crisps. I had my 'culture shock' moment. You would never see anyone over about 20 eating crisps in public in Germany. So much of your food is processed with loads of additives and always comes in strange brightly coloured packets. - It's another world.
I don't imagine the internet take-up is any different to the UK.
Lastly, regarding Credit Cards. There is a general distaste for CC cards here. Short terms loans are mostly arranged with the bank, who anyway give everyone with an income, what is called a Dispokredit. An automatic facility to overdraw- calculated by your monthly income.
If you do have a Credit card, many don't, your bank or the issusing company will expect you to pay back monthly, what you have spent. No carrying over from one month to the next.
Another 'culture shock' for me in the UK was a woman in front of me paying for two coffees at a coffee shop with a credit card. Try and do that in Germany and they'd laugh you out of town. As I said, no groceries or food to eat now - except in very good reatuarants can bought on credit.
And there lie your problems as a country - but that's another story.
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No, you are confusing CREDIT cards and DEBIT cards.. Everyone here uses debit cards.. but a minority use credit cards. It's has to do with the 'living with in your means' culture
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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Stephen, as I'm sure you know by now, there is much I admire in today's Germany.
I welcome the presence of German supermarket companies here: they provide much needed competition and I think they will do well. There is a startling disparity in the general level of price between Aldi and Lidl on the one hand ... and the home grown variety on the other. Local chains have grown accustomed to fat mark-ups that are morbidy obese, and they seek to protect them.
I surmise the reason is as follows: German supermarket policy is to get by with a much more modest mark-up. Competition on price is sharper in Germany because supermarkets are obliged to compete honestly, forthrightly on a level playing field and prices are easily compared, especially the unit price.
There is not the same level of comparison-friction that exists here. Companies are not allowed to engage in the price-obfustication so loved by the likes of Sainsbury.
If you have any particular knowledge of the rules about this, please tell, as I for one would be interested.
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Permalink Reply by Ann Kozlowski-Hunt on
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Food has always been cheaper in Germany in the last few decades. Therefore there is no need for the BOGOF offer. When they do have offers it is usually when you bulk buy.
AS for credit cards you can use them in most German supermarkets other than Aldi and Lidl, where like in this country you can only use direct credit card or cash.
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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I was surprised in Germany when buying printer ink in a large store like Wilkinsons that I had to pay cash. This meant a rush to the bank where I had to find a manager to show me where the ATMs were.
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The Supermarkets I know frown on CC use..
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Permalink Reply by George Pinnell on
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There is a danger in becoming over obsessive about the price paid at the till. People should also consider the cost, both for time and method of travel, to get their shopping. The benefits of shopping locally may be seen by fuel savings incurred by travelling further afield.
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George I agree about factoring in cost of running a car; also, some of us walk to Sainsbury and some even cycle!
Sainsbury's prices are often bizzare and poor value, but there is another (second-order) undesirable result and side-effect of the price-value obfustication: and that is the effect on the appearance of the store.
The oxymoron GREAT OFFERS is repeated ad nauseum. The plethora of posters and placards is ugly and cluttered.
Instead of pretending to be a discount store (which it surely is not), Sainsburys could learn from elsewhere in how to dress a store that would not be so tiring to the eye - and might help shoppers into the bargain, by reducing the 'information' overload.
I hold no brief for the Vegan Society. However, their Invercargill branch (NZ) has a good account of the interior of that town's latest Countdown store (also here in the Otago Daily Times). This is one of a chain of supermarkets in NZ, formerly Woolworths. The signage is clear, minimal, helpful, clean and uncluttered.
IMO, Sainsburys and supermarkets everywhere could take a leaf out of the Countdown book.
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Hi Clive,
The supers have buying and marketing power to reach national customers like no other retailers. It's been mentioned here before that the supplier or agent has to pay for it. I d like to add the how much. The likes of Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda would want the whole of their retail discount be supported by the supplier, or producer, in monetary terms ie no giving them free product to compensate or discounts. This means that not only their margin is protected but at best the supermarket makes more margin if the 1 free is paid at retail price by the supplier. Aisles or shelf space also command payment upfront to hold the promotion. Then when its doing well through supplier funding, they bring their own label products at below the market price and undercut the supplier.
If you get regular Bogofs, you know that this can only be done by reducing quantity or by increasing price to make it look like there is a saving. In truth regular Bogof or multi deals don't happen in a like for like way.
Take care
Lynne
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Permalink Reply by Christopher Fowler on
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Lynne - You make a good point about the actual display space on the shelves being paid for by the supplier. The same is true in other areas of the retail trade. One example I am very familiar with is bookshops. All those "three for the price of two" book offers, usually on paperbacks, are paid for by the publishers. The books that are in the window? Paid for the space by the publishers. The books that are out on the table labelled "new fiction" or "new autobiography" or "recent arrivals"? All that display is paid for by the publishers. Any time a particular book is getting a more favourable display than others, then the publisher is paying the bookshop to do it. This is much easier now that Britain is reduced to only one major bookshop chain (Waterstones), after take-overs of Dillons and Ottakars, and Border Books in the UK going bust. The small independent bookshops struggle to compete with the big chain stores. And everyone struggles to compete with the supermarkets, who stock a limited range of best-sellers, but can (nationwide) order those titles in such huge numbers that they get very very deep discounts. In some cases (eg mega-bestsellers like the Harry Potter books) it is cheaper for an indie bookshop to buy their copies at the local Tesco superstore than from the publisher, because the Tesco price is very low because of huge discounts, linked to massive bulk buying, which the publisher will not offer to a small bookshop ordering a (relatively) small number of copies.
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Hi Christopher, thanks for your reply.
Just to add- The agent or publisher has a lot of responsibility in setting the RRP retail price, the wholesale price and the supermarket or national price. The price on the shelf for a best seller or for top selling line should end up being the SAME price on the shelf wherever it came from. Of course agents are nt always the best marketeers, they handle other books and do deals. These deals do give geographical distribution but break the golden rule that everybody needs to make a profit, which can be achieved if these prices are set correctly. It's a shame people fall for these so called deals, which only or largely benefit the supermarket in question if scrutinised, not quite the ''bahgin'.
Book distribtuion has regressed to a duoploy split shared by Amazon and Waterstones, which is a real shame, even worse than pot noodles or the whatever noxious glutinous ready made boil in the bag thing that Clive is talking about..at least food has made its way to farmers markets, with quality high on the agenda.
best
Lynne
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Lynne - In fact, the literary agents have no hand in setting book prices. They are the intermediary between the individual author and her publisher. They negotiate the contract which stipulates the royalties the author receives, in return for which the agent takes between 10-20%. It is the publisher that sets the RRP, and also their marketing departments which negotiate with different sellers (Amazon, Waterstones, supermarkets, individual bookshops, WH Smiths) the level of discounts they will give the seller on the RRP, and the number of copies of a book the seller will take (on a "sale or return" basis, by the way). In their turn, the bookshops etc often base their orders of a new book on the basis of previous sales by the same author. I know of authors who have sold relatively few copies of their previous book whose publisher finds it hard to get their books into bookshops. This is one reason why many authors re-launch their careers writing under a pseudonym. An example of this in the area of science fiction/fantasy is Megan Lindholm, whose sales under her own name were so poor she re-launched her career under the pseudonym Robin Hobb (note that is also a name which could be a man or a woman), and did so very successfully. The most powerful single factor in all of this is the enormous buying power, and market dominance in the area of on-line bookselling, of Amazon. The supermarkets also exert huge influence. The publishers, though many of them are international conglomerates (French-based Hachette, for example, own both Orion and Little Brown in this country, and lots of other big publishers around the world), are often the weaker partner in this structure. And the poor old author is the last to be considered. As to the price you pay for a book, it is your choice. You can go to Amazon, and for bestsellers you will pay about 50% of the cover price, and Amazon will throw in free postage (because they negotiate deals with Royal Mail and other parcel delivery companies for rates that are a fraction of what you or I would pay for the same shipment); you can buy at Waterstones of WH Smiths, and get the book at maybe 75% or occasionally 50% of the cover price. Or you can go to an independent bookshop, where you will probably pay the full RRP. As for the general matter of distribution, in the area of newspaper and magazine distribution, WH Smiths is dominant (take a look at who has the outlets at railway stations and airports if you doubt that).
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