What can we do about supermarket prices?

andyrules

uktim29 wrote: »

It's supply and demand. If you have a store that has room for 10,000 products you'll sell the 10,000 products your customers want the most. If a small pack doesn't make the top 10,000 then you won't stock it. You'll constantly swap your bottom 100/200 sellers with other lines just incase something else might sell better.

So if small packs don't have enough demand for the size of the store then theres no point in stocking them. If you substitute a line for a slower selling line you'll have more unhappy customers than if you keep the original line.

tim I swear you are Terry under a pseudonym as you are this board's retailer champion! Try to bear in mind that this is a consumer board!

Yes, I think we are all bright enough to work out that supermarkets will sell what they want and to whom they want.;) However, the op was asking a very relevant question in today's climate of consumerism on a mass scale and problem of waste. To remind you she was asking how can supermarkets help impoverished elderly people and it really is something we should all consider you know!
As for the huge sizes being the most popular how do they know that? Personally, although I am buying for a family, I get sick of ONLY having giant this and 'extra large for extra value':rolleyes: that, but I buy it because that is what is offered. What do I do with the stale cornflakes halfway down that giant pack, what does my pensioner mum do with the mouldy bread, slices of ham etc etc - we chuck it in the bin!
Just a point to highlight this - yesterday in Sainsburys (early afternoon on the most popular day of the week) I failed to find a smallish sized joint of meat (any kind!) - only huge extended family size ones which were clearly NOT selling as quickly as the small ones had. In the reduced section there was a pile of large joints marked down. That tells me that people want the smaller sizes.

unrich

andyrules wrote: »

yesterday in Sainsburys (early afternoon on the most popular day of the week) I failed to find a smallish sized joint of meat (any kind!) - only huge extended family size ones which were clearly NOT selling as quickly as the small ones had. In the reduced section there was a pile of large joints marked down. That tells me that people want the smaller sizes.

Yesterday in my local butcher, they would have done pretty much anything for me. I had a nice chat. I bought a large chicken and 2 lamb shanks. I'll pop in again later this week. Its a shame to give your custom to a supermarket that doesn't fulfil your needs. Its almost like they don't care about you, as you'll buy what they've got not what you want. My butcher can get just about anything to order. e.g. Rabbits are cheap and stew nicely.

Of course it took a bit of extra time to go to the butcher but I have what I want, the butcher competes with the 3 supermarkets and the other butcher across the road so I guess the price was keen.

Anyway the OP was how do you force supermarkets stop selling for profit and subsidise people who want stuff the supermarkets don't want to sell. You will only do it by hitting them where it hurts, in the profit margin.

Its an anecdotal tale of one old person's dislike of change and inflation. Perhaps she was saying she doesn't like prices going up faster than her limited income.

uktim29

Basically there is the assumption by many consumers that there are massive mark up's in Supermarket retail, there are not. Supermarket retail has one of the lowest profit margins out of any industry.

People can't have cheaper food as has been discussed above. The other thing people want is for Farmers to earn more money, well to do that they'll have to pay more for their food. Either by using farm shops direct or by paying more for food from a Supermarket.

The problem is most people have no business/retail knowledge and just assume they know what their talking about and assume there is massive profit in any industry which could be passed on to someone here there and everywhere.

andyrules

unrich wrote: »

Yesterday in my local butcher, they would have done pretty much anything for me. I had a nice chat. I bought a large chicken and 2 lamb shanks. I'll pop in again later this week. Its a shame to give your custom to a supermarket that doesn't fulfil your needs. Its almost like they don't care about you, as you'll buy what they've got not what you want. My butcher can get just about anything to order. e.g. Rabbits are cheap and stew nicely.

Of course it took a bit of extra time to go to the butcher but I have what I want, the butcher competes with the 3 supermarkets and the other butcher across the road so I guess the price was keen.

Anyway the OP was how do you force supermarkets stop selling for profit and subsidise people who want stuff the supermarkets don't want to sell. You will only do it by hitting them where it hurts, in the profit margin.

Its an anecdotal tale of one old person's dislike of change and inflation. Perhaps she was saying she doesn't like prices going up faster than her limited income.

Yes, some butchers will go the extra mile if you can fit in with their opening hours and have a good one nearby.
However, my post wasn't about using different outlets, it was in reply to the op who was asking how supermarkets can better serve the community - which included sizing of their products. I picked up on that element alone, pointing out that we all will be old some day , when some of us will be trying to manage on not much and having to carry our purchases home! I also highlighted the fact that sometimes it is not just the elderly who appreciate smaller packs. In these times when the problem of waste on a massive scale is a universal problem - we do need to take stock of buying large and throwing away!

In the case of that 'anecdotal' old lady - she was constrained with her choice of shop by location.

pinkshoes

uktim29 wrote: »

You've obviously guessed because you don't actually know.

Really? Or perhaps I work within one of those industries, and know how much the farmer, packaging manufacturer and brand get, and thus how much supermarkets mark their products up...

Take a look at a branding company such as Premier Foods (Hovis, Oxo, Mr Kipling etc...), and how they've been struggling this year.

Supermarkets seem to have an amazing knack of taking advantage of scaremongering stories (such as wheat price increase, cost of aluminium and steel etc...) and bump up their prices, but the increase they actually have to pay for the goods is only marginal.

unrich

I remeber when M&S did salt and vinegar crunchy sticks that didn't have sugar in and they cost about 15p.

Now, will you, on my behalf, lobby M&S to take the sugar out of their "improved" sticks and also take the price back to 15p. (or give me the money to buy them).

This is a cry of "things ain't what they used to be". And "I'm not happy because things change and inflation happens".

The only way you can satisfy this old lady is by dipping into your pockets through taxation or by paying more for the stuff you buy from a supermarket and subsidising her niche tastes.

chuckles1066

unrich wrote: »

Cauliflowers are in season at the moment. When did you see this mythical Asda Uruguay cauliflower? June/July?

The Uruguay cauli doesn't pay fuel duty for the 1000s of miles it travels by air. It is, in effect, subsidised by the taxpayer and a floretal tribute to climate change.

Which is as mythical as the cauliflower from Uruguay :rolleyes:

Nice_Username

taxiphil wrote: »

As much as I would dearly love to agree with this statement, the Co-op are actually the worst kind of hypocrites and often engage in retail methods which even Tesco would draw the line at.

For example, it is quite despicable how the Co-op have downsized all their fresh milk sizes to the nearest 500ml, without a pro-rata reduction in price. Eg, a pint (568ml) has become 500ml, two pints (1.136 litres) has now become 1 litre, etc, throughout their entire range of own brand fresh milk.

This equates to a 13.6% price increase by stealth, on top of the fact that their milk prices were already much dearer than all the other supermarkets!

OK, legally, their noses are clean because the bottles do state the new metric volume (albeit not very prominently). But morally speaking, I wonder how many of the Co-op's customers actually know they're not getting a pint when they pick up what appears to be a pint bottle off the shelf. I bet not many do.

Especially as they have a large customer base amongst the elderly, to whom Co-op convenience stores are a lifeline. Like the OP correctly says, lots of old people trust the Co-op, so how many of them would even think to get out their reading glasses and check that it's actually a pint?

What kind of "ethical" retailer messes around with centuries of British tradition and downsizes the traditional pint by pulling a mean, cynical, grubby little trick like that?

What possible justification can there be for it? I'm sure if they'd asked their customers if they wanted to pay the same price for less milk, there would only have been one answer.

Tesco would have been absolutely crucified if they'd done that, and rightly so.

But because it's the Co-op, it seems to have slipped beneath the radar, probably because everyone thinks they're paragons of virtue and above suspicion.

It makes you wonder if the Co-op are hoodwinking us in other ways too.

Personally I'd happily pay a bit more for milk to give dairy farmers a fair living. The supermarkets are crucifying them.

There's always a high cost somewhere to 'low price'.

taxiphil

Nice_Username wrote: »

Personally I'd happily pay a bit more for milk to give dairy farmers a fair living. The supermarkets are crucifying them.

There's always a high cost somewhere to 'low price'.

It's not the actual price of milk I was complaining about - that's a separate argument altogether.

It's the grubby, underhand practice of 'downsizing' something as basic and historic as the British pint of milk to 500ml, without changing the price, in the full knowledge that most people won't notice the change in bottle size and/or won't understand that it equates to a 13.6% price increase by stealth.

If they want to raise the price of milk for whatever reason - fine - but why not just be open and honest about it? Why not keep it as a pint and just raise the price? People would be able to understand what's happening then, and would be able to make simple price comparisons between different retailers.

chuckles1066

taxiphil wrote: »

It's the grubby, underhand practice of 'downsizing' something as basic and historic as the British pint of milk

You need to have a look HERE

Our Government signed away any "historic" sentiments appertaining to weights and measures long ago.

You can't sell "pints" of milk any more........