Last October I wrote of my supermarket aversion. Six months later, it’s still there. I usually shop at Woolworths in Deloraine weekly, and approaching the store I always feel trepidation. A sense of impending tussle – adversarial sparring – with a sophisticated and pervasive marketing monster. Them against me. Of course I’m aware of some of the tricks – aka marketing strategies – used by supermarkets to maximise impulsive/unplanned purchases of high profit-margin items: the type and tempo of background music, placing target items at eye-level (for adults or children), eye-catching packaging, signage (increasingly glued flat to the floor), price tags looking like prices are reduced when in fact they’re not, magazines and confectionery displays near the checkout. And others. Many others. All aiming to separate the suckers from their dollars. Recently I read here of another trick/strategy: reducing package size and/or product size without reducing price. I think it’s reprehensible. But I’ve no doubt the supermarkets would say it’s caveat emptor (i.e. let the buyer beware); and that the unit pricing they’re introducing should inform customers. But the unit pricing tags are so tiny it’s hard to read. And I don’t know who’d jot down unit prices to compare week-in-week-out. Logic dictates that treating customers with patronising contempt should backfire on the supermarkets. But I’m not holding my breath on it.
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