The war on waste continues!
Sainsbury’s have announced that they will soon be stopping the all so familiar BOGOF (buy one get one free) on all their products and will be phasing them out between now and august. Tesco recently announced something similar but are focusing more on the perishable offers in a bit to cut waste.
Recently these offers have come under attack from watchdog agencies as they encourage people to buy items they would previously not have considered putting into their trollies under the guise of an unmissable bargain. They have however been blamed for creating a large amount of extra food waste as people double up on fresh items that go off before they can even be used. One of the most lamented items are the packets of ready to eat lettuce, renowned for having a short shelf life, they are often featured amongst the BOGOF items and are more often than not consigned to the bin before both can be consumed. Other noticeable items such as nets of lemons and oranges are often lemonted (I can’t resist a bad pun) as people throw half or more of them away.
But it’s not just the war on waste that’s driving this change, concerns over confectionary sales encouraging people to eat more junk food than is good for them means that supermarkets are being taken to task over responsible selling, especially if those items can be seen to be marketed at children.
The hammering the top supermarkets have taken over the last few years from the budget supermarkets means that they are falling more in line with just selling the items cheaper instead of relying on gimmicks like BOGOF to lure us in. So are shoppers getting savvier or are we just as seduced by the: sale/ half price, BOGOF and 3 for 2 as ever?
Recently the daily mail listed a selection of items for sale in various stores and asked their readers to work out what was the best deal, unsurprisingly the convoluted way they were prices and packages as well as the seemingly A level style math needed to work out how much you would be paying means the answer for most people was no.
But are they always a bad thing? What about on non-perishables such as washing up liquid or nappies? Well it seems even those “bargains might not be as great as first thought when examined closer” many supermarkets will rise the prices for the legally required time before the “sale” happens and some have skated pretty close to the wind when it comes to just this side of legal with their pricing.
Personally I love a good BOGOF as long as they are reasonably priced, and in my case I have a coupon, as most of the time the supermarkets will let me use 2 coupons, one for each item. But even I have been lured into the whole BOGO free trap and have found myself putting things into the trolley that I would probably not have done had it not been for the sale.
SO it may be the end of these particular sales, but as long as they keep the prices down consistently and still pass on savings to the customer then who’s to say we’re not getting the better end of the deal.
