A BBC Panorama program on air tonight has uncovered a series of mistakes and misleading claims on pricing from all of the ‘big four’ supermarkets. Many of the potentially misleading claims come from “bigger pack, better value” deals which turn out to be less value for money than smaller pack sizes. With roughly 68% of the grocery market of the whole country split between them competition is fierce but some experts believe that the ‘so called price war’ is not all it seems to be.
“The name of the game is to be as clever as possible in how you promote, how you use your discounts and how you attract your customers” – Richard Perks, Mintel Market Research
Consumer Law experts believe these mistakes could potentially leave the supermarkets open to prosecution. The supermarkets deny misleading customers as well as arguing that much of the recent fall in inflation is due to the price war amount the multiples.
Watch tonight’s episode of Panorama on BBC2 at 8.30pm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16027733
Chander Hingorani
14/12/2011
Am I surprised. No. The supermarkets like the Banks are very clever at misleading their consumers and then going on lobbying offensive to tell the world how good and cheap they are. Dig deeper and you find the flaws but for an ordinary Joe Bloggs to investigate the truth will require a masters degree in marketing and a super computer to calculate and compare prices.
Do we have the time and patience to do it. I leave it to you to decide.