Supermarkets like to make us think they are there to help us keep the cost of our shopping down, with slogans such as Morrisons ‘Price locked low’ and Sainsbury’s ‘Hey big saver’. Cheesy catchphrases are just one of the strategies which the supermarkets employ to attract punters keen for a bargain. Some of their other tactics were explored in an edition of BBC One’s Panorama called Supermarket Deals: How Good Are They?
Reporter Michelle Ackerley starts with some supermarket own-brand, pre-prepared cuts of meat and fish. The packaging sneakily makes the cuts look larger than they are, with the label or sleeve covering an empty space in the tray instead of more meat. Consequently, the customer assumes they’re getting a better deal for their money than the reality. While this trick dates back as long as goods have been sold, traditional supermarkets such as Tesco and Morrisons have had to find newer approaches since budget rivals Aldi and Lidl have appeared and snared some of their customers. One of the ways they have responded is to advertise that some of their products are the same price as their equivalents in the discount supermarkets. Michelle recruits two families to trawl round the stores looking for ‘price-matched’ goods, who find out that this involves more effort than usual, without much difference in what they spend. Only a few hundred items out of tens of thousands are ‘price-matched’, but the ubiquitous signs around the aisles advertising them give the impression there are more. These signs are often bright red and yellow, colours which, according to Ele Clark, retail editor of Which?, we are ‘programmed’ to associate with ‘a great offer’.
‘Price-matching’ isn’t just a psychologically savvy way of promoting products, though; it also affects how they are made. Michelle compares similarly priced, similarly sized foodstuffs from Tesco and Aldi, which we might expect to be of similar quality. However, chicken nuggets from Tesco had less chicken in than those from Aldi, and tins of Tesco coconut milk contained less coconut than their Aldi equivalent. To match the price charged by Aldi, Tesco have scrimped on the ingredients because their other costs are higher, with both stores’ pricing expected to allow a profit. From the shopper’s point of view, Tesco’s inferior versions are worse value than Aldi’s, and this is disguised by them being at the same price. But more fundamentally, this illustrates how products are designed and manufactured according to what’s most profitable for the companies rather than with the aim of making them as good as possible. The documentary describes another example of this: shrinkflation.
Shrinkflation is the practice of reducing the size of a product while maintaining the same sale price. Shrinking it means saving on rising production costs, allowing a wider profit margin, with the consumer losing out by getting less for their money. Chocolate bars and bags of crisps are most obviously smaller than they used to be, and Michelle shows us how the New York Bakery Co has kept its bagels the same width, but deviously increased the size of the hole in the middle. As Ele says, if the price of something remains the same, we don’t always notice when it has been subject to shrinkflation.
Perhaps to counter the risk of customers being put off by inferior or shrinkflated comestibles, supermarkets aim to maintain them with loyalty card schemes, such as Tesco’s Clubcard and Morrisons’ More Card. When shoppers who have signed up for a loyalty card make purchases, they accrue points which can then be redeemed back as cash vouchers, and they are also eligible for discounts on particular items. A browse round a branch of Sainsbury’s shows that the price reductions which come with having their Nectar card tend to apply to cakes, crisps, fizzy drinks and alcohol, rather than staples such as meat and vegetables. As retail expert Kate Hardcastle says, seeing that something is on special offer can be enough temptation to buy it, even if we didn’t originally intend to. Rebecca Tobi of The Food Foundation adds that because unhealthy snacks tend to be cheap to make, there’s a commercial incentive for companies to push their sales to maximise profits. She wants ‘systemic change’, but defines this merely as having offers on healthier produce. As well as encouraging customers towards profitable comfort food, loyalty cards also provide the supermarket with valuable data on spending patterns which feeds into their marketing machine.
All the tricks and techniques shown on Panorama’s exposé are consequences of goods being commodified, or produced for sale. A can of beans isn’t just a can of beans, it’s an economically quantified unit whose end form has been shaped by what’s profitable for the owners of the companies which manufacture and distribute it. The quality and amount of its ingredients aren’t decided upon to make it better to eat, but according to what’s cost effective. Its packaging isn’t only designed to preserve the food inside, but also to publicise and exaggerate it. And when it’s sold to us, we’re made to believe we’ve got a decent deal if marketing strategies such as price-matching and loyalty cards have worked. These strategies cynically and subtly aim to manipulate our choices so we spend more and keep coming back. Competition between supermarkets for market share fuels a race to the bottom as far as the quality of goods is concerned, while profits for the capitalist class soar.
Mike Foster
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