Innocent Smoothies have lost their innocence - weights and measures trickery ...

2sides2everystory

k3lvc wrote: »

And round and round in circles we go :rotfl:

My 'pre-determined in the boardroom' is driven by many £££/€€€/$$$ in research/interviewing shoppers to understand whether unit cost is more important than absolute size/weight in an inflationary market.

If you want to challenge the views of many thousands then feel free but you're not getting an awful lot of support here.

Thanks K3, I feel free :T

Can you just remind us whether unit cost is more important than absolute size/weight in an inflationary market?

And then could you tell us whether consumers benefit or whether society benefits when companies like Coca Cola make the decision for us?

Gerstner and Hess argued that bait and switch might be good for consumers, but is it? How does the unilateral substitution of a new more expensive 750ml pack for a cheaper 1 litre pack that the customer went to the shelf to purchase affect the behaviour of that customer? Could it in fact be argued that the customer has in fact been baited by long term promotion and establishment of a particular brand product of a particular size at a particular shelf in their local store and switched to the offer of the more expensive (per unit volume) carton?

That is how it felt to me on Friday evening.

MamaMoo_2

2sides2everystory wrote: »

I'll be claiming the fifth on that one Mama

The fifth? I'm not well versed on American law, is that the right to remain ignorant?

pitkin2020

MamaMoo wrote: »

The fifth? I'm not well versed on American law, is that the right to remain ignorant?

He doesn't need the right, he wrote the law on that one .............

k3lvc

2sides2everystory wrote: »

Thanks K3, I feel free :T

Can you just remind us whether unit cost is more important than absolute size/weight in an inflationary market?

And then could you tell us whether consumers benefit or whether society benefits when companies like Coca Cola make the decision for us?

Gerstner and Hess argued that bait and switch might be good for consumers, but is it? How does the unilateral substitution of a new more expensive 750ml pack for a cheaper 1 litre pack that the customer went to the shelf to purchase affect the behaviour of that customer? Could it in fact be argued that the customer has in fact been baited by long term promotion and establishment of a particular brand product of a particular size at a particular shelf in their local store and switched to the offer of the more expensive (per unit volume) carton?

That is how it felt to me on Friday evening.

Oh great - now we start on the academia from 13 years ago rather than current shopper behaviour relevant to both the UK marketplace and the current economic situation.

If you'd have raised/discussed this 5-10 years ago in the UK there might have been a tad more support than now but the world has changed significantly and some of their views/theories are outdated.

2sides2everystory

Ah yes I was forgetting, silly me - it was as long ago as 1987 when Gordon Gekko said "Greed is Good". In Wall Street 2 he observed "Now it seems it's legal!"

Bait and switch is not an outdated concept, K3, so be careful out there with your modern ideas of shepherding consumers along the rails of your corporate ideals of acceptable behaviour.

It strikes me that the ideas you wish us to accept as "normal" routinely injure us as consumers.

MamaMoo_2

I was shopping in Asda earlier. They're still selling the 1 litre bottles of innocent smoothies. Next to those, however, were Asda smoothies. In 750ml cartons. Maybe the 750ml is the new 'standard'.
Also, seeing them next to each other really drove home how stupid someone would have to be to think they contained the same volume...

mr_fishbulb

2sides2everystory wrote: »

Can you just remind us whether unit cost is more important than absolute size/weight in an inflationary market?

For a company where the majority of their customers don't bother debating price points Vs changes in product amounts on a messaging board (i.e. most companies) then yes it is more important.

2sides2everystory wrote: »

And then could you tell us whether consumers benefit or whether society benefits when companies like Coca Cola make the decision for us?

The consumer has the ultimate decision - if they are not happy with the amount of product they are getting for a certain price, then they don't buy it.

What do you expect these companies to do? Sell something at £1.10 and keep the same amount of product, whilst everything else on the same shelf is still at 99p (albeit a smaller size)? Consumers will notice the price difference first.

biscit

I think when we judge what was a con, we have to think to ourselves "Would a resonably educated person who's paying attention fall for this, without feeling foolish?" If the answer is no, it's not a con.

2sides2everystory

biscit, your argument might hold water if
(a) the law (CPR Regulation 5 from memory now?) made reference to the beahviour of a resonably educated person but it doesn't. It refers to any likelihood that an average consumer might be misled. Or
(b) if financial and general education in the UK were good enough, then a resonably educated person might equate to an average consumer. But I think we all know that we are far off that equivalence and in fact we are probably going backwards by it as a comparison.

Dreamnine

I've stopped buying them since they raised the price.

2 for £4 when they were a litre, fair enough, but not their new 750ml size.. just not worth it.