Yesterday I walked into ASDA and was confronted by an end-of-plinth display selling multipacks of Pepsi Max for £6.00.
The packaging wasn’t clear how many were in each pack, so I assumed there were 24. But on closer examination it turns out they were selling 30 standard cans of drink for £6.00, or 20p per can.
I was fuming!
How DARE they market a soft drink for such a ridiculously low price? Or, alternatively, how DARE they market a single can at such an extortionate price?
Multipacks always get my gander up, but this was taking it to extremes.
I do not know how much they charge for individual cans. They may not even sell them individually. But most supermarkets sell individual cans for anything between 65p and 80p each. Now, if Walmart can sell cans at 20p each and still make a profit, how much are they ripping us off when they sell individual cans?
Pepsico must produce millions of cans a day. For the sake of argument, let’s assume they produce a million cans each day. There is no difference between the cost of production of the first can and the millionth can. They all cost the same amount to manufacture. So why is the price of one can so ridiculously more expensive than if you buy 30 cans?
It does not cost Walmart any more to store them. And since I use the self-service checkouts, it doesn’t cost them any more in labour to take my money off me. So why the difference? It is obvious.
They charge that much because they can.
And that is what annoys me so much: the sheer arrogance and abuse of their monopoly-like position.
They tell us we are lucky to live in a capitalist society; lucky because we have so much choice. But the choice in most cases is whether to pay 3 times the genuine price of an item, or whether to pay 4 times its proper price.
I suggested some time ago that consumer protection legislation should be changed to prohibit this kind of marketing rip-off. It just needs a simple Act of Parliament requiring every chain of stores to market all its goods of a particular brand at the same price per unit throughout their chain. So, for example, if ASDA decide they want to sell Pepsi Max at £1.00 per litre, then cans of 330ml Pepsi Max must be sold at 33p. And 2 litre bottles have to be sold at £2.00 each.
Simple.
And if Tesco, Sainsbury or LIDL want to compete with them on price, they simply have to decide to sell the same product at a different price per litre. Consumers are no longer hoodwinked, tricked or manipulated. They are given a simple choice. And choice is good, right?
The superstores start screaming that we have taken away their right to choose how to market their produce. Not at all. They are perfectly free to choose whatever price per litre they want to sell at. Free as a bird. They just do not have the freedom to use cunning, guile and their multifarious emotional manipulations of the buying experience (euphemistically termed “marketing”) to rip off consumers.
Allowing large corporations to spend millions on manipulating ordinary people into buying things they do not want or need is not freedom. Or at least, it is not freedom for the working class to buy through transparent pricing. It is freedom for multi-national conglomerates to screw as much out of the hard-earned wages and salaries of ordinary people as they can.
