Not long ago Mcdonalds was taken to task over its use of "supersize" options. Where the customer can pay a small amount above the listed price and receive a considerable increase in the food supplied. People were very worried about obesity and overeating resulting from such practices. The fact that they promised to do away with such options while quietly keeping them (they just dont call it "supersize" anymore) seems to have escaped most peoples attention.

Recently supermarkets have started a similar scheme where they advertise products as buy 2 or 3 for $5 giving a large saving while leaving the single price unchanged. This forces you to buy more than you wanted as to only buy the one seems very irrational and wasteful.
The days of buy one get one free or a simple reduction of price has given way to this coercive and manipulative business practice that aims to increase consumption and may well lead to the same outcomes people were worried about in the Mcdonalds case.

What do people think of this new marketing strategy of the supermarkets? Do you feel manipulated? Do you buy the three or pay full price for one? Has it ever made you buy more than you intended?

Yeah, I saw washing powder was 3 for $6, and have now become OCD with my washing machine...
Swings and roundabouts hey, to their credit they mostly have unit pricing now.
We generally dont like to take ownership of our own problems e.g. "Maccas made me fat" or "Woolies made me spend all my money", because it is more reassuring than "I am overweight because I eat too much and dont do enough exercise" or "I blew all my money at Woolies because I only went there out of boredom and got sucked in by all the impulse buys".

No because at the end it is us that make the choice. It is only us that gives consent to that manipulation. I always wonder if you can buy two for less than twice the price of one, how much are they really ripping us off. :)

However, in saying that there has to be some balance via consumer laws - which there is to some extent, such as regulations about false advertising and the like. eg. the old fellow the other day on one of those current affair type shows that demonstrated (which was followed up by consumer affairs) that milk labelled a certain volume when poured out and measured actually came under every time. So you are not getting whay you are paying for.

But that is a different thing to marketing manipulation. I figure the consumer can come back to the retailer and say I only want ONE of those can you sell it to me at half the price of the BUY TWO FOR ONE given the other is just a gimmick. You can try anyway.

I won't buy into those point systems or fly buys because they are rip offs but many people do and don't realise all they are doing is pushing the prices up. Businesses are not employing these tactics for altruistic reasons.

I reckon though if they are taxing cigarettes they should also tax high saturated fat foods or high sugar foods for the same reasons and that can all go towards the hospital budget or health education.

At some stage every body has to start taking responsibility for themselves. Apparently nothing is my own fault these days.

Poor widdw mikk. He's being oppressed by those nasty people offering him choices he can accept or reject.

Another one is their advert offering 10c per litre off your petrol when you spend $20 or more on fresh produce.

Now this seems harmless, but my bet is it's in reaction to the government intervention, forcing them to have national pricing, so they can't target independent fruit shops.

You see this is why CEO's get paid so well and why they (big business) can find ways to get around any problem our 'lower paid' legislators come up with.

A more concerning trend is the number of big supermarkets in a saturated area.

My region has a population of less than 60,000, yet we have 4 wollies, 2 coles and seneral IGA's, with more to follow soon.

Modern day supermarkets are becomming the convenience stores of the future and that's more of a worry.