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.

Mikk, you are clearly not a very good housewife :)

For then you would have a pantry, just buy things when they
are on special. So even if you buy an extra whatever, you are
still only using it, when you need it later on. So that is
a bit different to the Macdonalds story.

Supermarkets have their weekly loss leaders, which is what they
advertise in the papers, to get you through the door. Their
real profits are made by all those things that you buy, which
are not on special.

Now companies like Costco, take it to the extreme. Buy very cheap,
but you need to buy 30 toilet roles, or 10 kg of washing powder
or whatever. For of course it costs a supermarket significantly less
per roll, in labour terms, to sell you one pack of 30, compared
to 15 twin packs

Yes, mikk, I do feel manipulated.
Your key word was 'wasteful'. Good old western consumer ideology dictates that it's all there for the taking, and supermarkets would have to be the foremost purveyors of this extreme logic.
Although we delight in the knowledge that we have fifty brands of cereal to choose from, we forget that our choice of variety and type of shopping outlet has been whittled away for the most part to Coles and Woolworths. The same goes for the U.K. where Tesco's and Sainsburys reign supreme.
We are manipulated at their every whim. A trip to the supermarket is often a soul destroying experience - an automated reflex, certainly not one where the senses related to gastronomy have any bearing whatsoever.

Mikk,

This is done to shift excess stock. A smart consumer uses this to stock up on items he/she uses regularly.

Poirot, you sound confused. What on earth are you doing, going to
Coles or Woolies, if you hate them so much?

I remind you that there are over 1000 IGA stores in Australia.
You have butchers, fruit and veggie shops, speciality stores,
farmers markets, you can even grow your own if you wish!

I put it to you that supermarket chains grew, because examined
closely, they provide what consumers want, ie choice, convenience
and value for money, or people would not go there.

Yes the field narrowed down in the UK. The game is so competitive
that its fairly easy to go broke, trying to compete. Net margins
are slim, if you look at the figures.

What is far more dominant then food retailers, are global
food processors like Nestle, Kraft, Unilever etc. Buy your Uncle
Toby's and its Nestle at the controls. Unilever make a whole lot
of washing powders competing against each other. The list goes
on.

In the global scheme of things, these are huge coporations with
enormous power globally, Coles and Woolies are midgets.

It sounds to me that what you really hate is Western consumerism.
Fair enough, but it has become what it is, by people making
choices with their wallets. I can't see any reason to blame Coles
or Woolies, for giving consumers what they want.

I worry about it but like with the McDonalds example people need to thimk for themselves and resist such marketing.