Tesco Tomato Ketchup (4 sizes!) - Beware of pricing !

Broadwood

Was in my local big Tesco today for a few items which included some tomato ketchup. Always do main shop in Lidl or Aldi nowadays with occasional visits to Tesco Sainsbury's and Morrisons for various specific items and offers when available.

Anyway I digress, back to the ketchup. I narrowed my choice down to the own brand variety excluding the everyday line. There were 4 sizes along the shelf, all with the top-down squeezy-type plastic bottle. Non had the yellow specials price labels, all had the standard white labels. Sizes and prices were as follows:

460g @ 85p
570g @ £1.05p
700g @ 80p
1000g @ £1.15p

I asked a staff member who was nearby if he could explain the wierd pricing of the 4 available sizes. Turns out he was actually the store manager. He couldn't explain, and agreed the prices were strange but correct and would pass my query up the chain of management later.

While Tesco continue to mislead and bamboozle customers they will continue to lose savvy customers to the discounters. I've previously noticed instances wher bigger "better value" labelled packs of things like cereals turn out on closer inspection to be worse value than the smaller packs. Totally misleading.

kippers

They have been doing strange things like this for a while....but so do the other big supermarkets so it's a good job us lot are savvy and pick these things up

Nada666

Broadwood wrote: »

Totally misleading.

Why is it misleading? You either buy the size of pack you want or you choose the cheapest by weight if that is your criterion. What's the problem?

jackieblack

The pricing might be odd, but if they are clearly labelled it's not misleading.

jon81uk

It's possible that another supermarket decided to put their 700g bottle on offer down to 80p so Tesco decided to match the price.

daveyjp

All supermarkets know exactly how many of each product they sell and how trends change demand. It's why Tesco have a loyalty card.

Data mining will have shown that currently the 570g bottle is extremely popular in the area the OP lives and sells regardless of other offers. This size is therefore overpriced compared to other sized bottles.

This goes on throughout the store with popular and more importantly not often purchased products - jam/marmalade is another example of such a product.

PenguinOfDeath

daveyjp wrote: »

All supermarkets know exactly how many of each product they sell and how trends change demand. It's why Tesco have a loyalty card.

Data mining will have shown that currently the 570g bottle is extremely popular in the area the OP lives and sells regardless of other offers. This size is therefore overpriced compared to other sized bottles.

They would know this anyway though through their till and stock ordering system, they don't need loyalty card data to tells them this.

Time to take the tin hat off

geordie_joe

PenguinOfDeath wrote: »

They would know this anyway though through their till and stock ordering system, they don't need loyalty card data to tells them this.

Yes but without the loyalty card details they only know that "someone" bought that item and the other items in that particular transaction.

With loyalty card details they also know what that person bought in previous transact ions.

So, for example, if someone buys a tin of sponge pudding then gets home and finds they don't have any custard to go with, so buy custard on their next shop.

Without loyalty card details there will be no connection between the transactions. But with loyalty card details Tesco will know how many bought sponge pudding and then came back for custard.

So they will be able to work out if it is worth having the sponge puds on offer and hiking up the price of custard to make up for it.

PenguinOfDeath wrote: »

Time to take the tin hat off

No, it's time for you to think more.

PenguinOfDeath

That's not what was said though, the 570g bottle will show as the best selling whether the customers use a loyalty card or not.
Obviously the point you make about the connections between transactions is valid... I do wonder though how asda, Morrisons, Spar, aldi, lidl cope without this info

Tesco in this instance are taking advantage of 'blind shopping', and why should they they're in business to make money after all, it's up to savvy people like OP to recognise this and warn others - a reminder never hurts now and again!

daveyjp

Asda, Morrisons etc do have this data, its collected every time someone pays by a debit or credit card.

They are taking advantage of blind shopping, but before doing this the supermarkets need to know which products buyers are likley to buy blind and for this they use sophisticated data mining.

geordie_joe

PenguinOfDeath wrote: »

That's not what was said though, the 570g bottle will show as the best selling whether the customers use a loyalty card or not.

I agree, but the loyalty card will give them a lot more information.

PenguinOfDeath wrote: »

Obviously the point you make about the connections between transactions is valid... I do wonder though how asda, Morrisons, Spar, aldi, lidl cope without this info

They do cope without it, but not as well as Tesco do with it.

PenguinOfDeath wrote: »

Tesco in this instance are taking advantage of 'blind shopping', and why should they they're in business to make money after all,

I have to completely disagree with that.

It appears people think Tesco are taking advantage of blind shopper because they will buy the smaller ones through some sort of "shopper blindness".

But, many people who normally buy the smaller size will spot the larger size is cheaper and buy that instead.

Also, the larger size is obviously discounted, so the people who normally buy it will be getting it cheaper.

So tesco may gain when someone buys the smaller one when they could have bought the bigger one if they were not "asleep", but they will lose out each time someone, who wanted to buy the larger one, buys if for the discounted price.

This is where the loyalty card info comes in. Tesco can see who used to buy the smaller bottles and switched to the cheaper larger ones, and who didn't.

More importantly, they will know what other things they buy when they buy cheap tomato ketchup.

Like my previous example of giving them cheap sponge pudding and they will pay more for custard. Give them cheap tomato ketchup and they'll buy more burgers, frozen chips, fish fingers, chicken nuggets etc.

It has nothing to do with conning blind shoppers, it's about addon sales. Getting the customer to buy things they didn't come in for, or weren't thinking about buying. Most shops do it, but tesco are far better at doing it than any of them.

PenguinOfDeath wrote: »

it's up to savvy people like OP to recognise this and warn others - a reminder never hurts now and again!

Of course not, but how many people who don't look at the size and prices of tomato ketchup when they are standing in front of it, will bother to come in here to find out which items are better value?