MSE Blog: Corn by any other name would taste as sweet 5 March 2013 at 2:49PM in Food shopping & groceries 4 replies 1.1K views

Former_MSE_Helen

Hi all, this is a thread to discuss the MSE blog:
Corn by any other name would taste as sweet


"Most consumers are aware of the crafty marketing ploys companies use to get us to part with our cash, most notoriously the hard-to-resist smell of fresh baked goods in supermarkets...."


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chem1st

The placing of similar products next to each other so that people pick up the wrong one.

This could be, when one product is on offer, and is not restocked, so people mistakenly pick up the more expensive product.
But also, when the prices are placed on the shelf furthest away from the product. - You might expect the price to be on the shelf a few cm below the product, but it is in fact 50cm above. And the price you have noticed is for the product 50cm below. Which just so happens to be a smaller version of the same product.

Nada666

I don't understand the complaint. How many pennies does a teaspoon of tea-leaves cost compared to a pot of tea? What is the retail cost of minced beef in a £5 beefburger? Cinemas charge a lot more for popping rather than just warming their maize. Shoppers pay for packs of chopped and peeled vegetables. People pay 65p for a single chocolate bar instead of paying £1 for a packet of four. You can pay more for a single portion of cooked porridge than for a kilo of oatmeal. How much are the beans and milk in a £4 cup of coffee? You have heard of this thing called bottled spring water, haven't you?

Sorry, I just don't understand what the story is.

Ken68

The story, Nada, is about the tricks that shops and sellers including supermarkets get up to. Another example might be holiday companies selling you the sun, which they don't own... or the view which they don't own.
Another example might be the nutrition in, say ,a 300g can of peas...tis the same whether you buy from Harrods or Aldi.Another ploy which I notic ed in Marks and Sparks on Saturday was putting offers on the bottom shelf, with miniscule per kg pricing .And Scotch porridge oats,twice the price of oats not packaged as regional. How do they differ from oats grown in another county or country.
Thank you Deb and Helen for posting, just what shoppers ought to be thinking of.

Chris25

went to T's this morning & the gorgeous smell of warm cinnamon wafted across the supermarket. Surprise, surprise, the hot cross buns are on offer - B1G1F.