Showing posts with label price. Show all posts
Showing posts with label price. Show all posts

Monday 17 July 2017

The Dark Side of Supermarket Warfare

All competition is good competition... right?



Entering through the doors of your local Tesco, you are not just entering a supermarket. You are entering a battleground. But in this battle, there are no guns or swords- instead, you'll find weapons of words scattered around the place- "I'm cheaper", "Brand Guarantee", and the like.

The supermarket industry has reached saturation point, and as a result, the players are all scrambling to win the pound in your pocket. One of the most prominent tactics to do this, that has risen to fame in the past decade, is the phenomenon of 'Price Matching'. The essence of this is that if you go to your local Tesco, for example, and find that the cereal you are buying could be had for less money in Sainsbury's, if you can prove this to the cashier at Tesco, they will match the cheaper Sainsbury's price in store. In some stores, the offer is made to go even lower than the competitor price.

Seems great, doesn't it? On the surface, yes. Competition is very important in any market, especially one that is as large a part of our daily lives as our supermarkets. Competition leads to better service, better stores, and, perhaps most importantly, lower cost to customers.

And at first glance, price matching seems to be competition set in stone by the supermarkets- a written promise to compete with each other. Furthermore, one could argue that price matching means setting low prices is not enough to compete- it arguably puts stores on a level playing field to compete on other aspects of the customer experience, such as customer service.

But not all is as rosy as it seems, because in reality, price matching is unlikely to lead to a better outcome for the consumer.

Firstly, the notion of price matching allows stores to set higher prices than competitors in the first place. Price matching means stores can attract those who are so sensitive to higher prices that they may have avoided the store if it wasn't a policy. In the case of direct price matching, where one store exactly matches, and doesn't beat, another store's price, the incentive to 'compete' and set truly lower prices is dulled. Essentially, price matching weakens the link between demand and supply that otherwise would drive a store to cut prices.

There are more practical arguments against price matching too. These are well set out in Morten Hviid and Greg Shaffer's 1999 paper on the subject, but in reality these weaknesses are not too difficult to comprehend.

Firstly, the procedure for actually gaining the right to a price match is not so simple- this is usually designed to be an inconvenience by supermarkets. For example, the very act of providing another store offers the same product at a cheaper price is often a hassle. The customer must provide written proof of the competitor's offer, usually a difficult task unless the customer is willing to travel between multiple stores in search of the best price. And if he does so, why would he then not purchase the product at the originally cheapest store?



And once the proof is provided, the ultimate approval is given by the store- who may disagree that the two compared products are the same, or have some other quarrel with the proof provided. The terms and conditions make the process far less open than it first appears.

Furthermore, as Hviid and Shaffer point out, "In every instance it takes longer to complete a transaction when price matching is requested than when it is not". This means there is a non-financial cost to entering a price matching deal, and often the amount you are saving is not enough to make this a cost worth bearing.

So while price matching is indeed a form of competition, it is not as beneficial to the consumer as advertised. It arguably allows stores to be less proactive in setting low prices, and also provides many practical stumbles that to many consumers will just not be worth it. It's a form of what is called imperfect, oligopolistic Bertrand competition- in which there are a few firms who compete with each other on price. In theory, Bertrand competition leads to an optimal solution for the consumer. But the painstaking realities of the price matching process mean this, in practice, is far from the case.

As consumers wise up to this reality, it seems some supermarkets are too- Sainsburys announced the removal of their price matching program last year, highlighting the need for "clear, simple pricing". The question that remains is whether other supermarkets will follow suit.

Sunday 10 August 2014

What Happened To Freddos Being 10p? (Part One).


The humble Freddo. Once the posterchild of the consumer chocolate boom, the first word in affordable sugary snacks, one of the only things you could actually buy with a 10p coin. Almost every British child has fond memories of the little sugary frog-shaped friend.
But fewer such memories are being gifted to the youth of today. No, the Freddo has been attacked viciously in recent years.

Since the introduction of the Freddo as we know it in 1994, the price has risen from a humble 10p to a more maverick 15p, to a dangerously inconvenient 17p (who carries around exactly 17p change) to its frankly outrageous current retail price of 20p. That's a 100% increase- a double in price!
There's been an outrage over this price change- a quick glance at the numerous facebook pages on the subject would confirm this.

But why has the price increased? One might say the greed of Cadbury itself- perhaps rightly so, however considering the presumably low profit margins on such a low-priced chocolate, it would be a questionable business decision to increase the price for no reason other than hope for more profits.

The answer in fact is one that you will have heard of- it affects all of us, and not just products like the Freddo- INFLATION.
Charting the scandalous Fredd-flation.

Inflation, simply put, is the increase in price of products or services.
A decade ago, 10p in your pocket could buy you a tasty little Freddo- but today, 10p cannot buy you the Freddo. So, because of inflation, your purchasing power, the possibilities of what your money can do, has decreased. You're worse off- you have to pay more than you did before, but you're not getting a larger, tastier Freddo; it's the same thing.

But inflation is not all that bad, especially if you're of the borrowing type. Let's have a theoretical (simplified) example. Say you buy a house in a period of low inflation. You pay with a fixed interest rate mortgage you've taken out from the bank. If a period of high inflation follows, your house price will rise (theoretically, as inflation=higher money supply=more money to spend, HOWEVER often other minor factors affect house price), and while you have the option available to profit from this increase (you can sell your house and make a profit), the total amount you have to pay the bank is still the pre-inflation price.
So, by the end of the mortgage payments, if inflation is still up, you've paid less than the market value of your home. So inflation has helped you!

But of course, inflation can lead to terrible consequences. Inflation is gas and energy prices has been reported to have fatal consequences on the poorer members of society (according to the Office for National Statistics, unaffordable energy bills contributed to 24,000 deaths in the UK in the winter of 2011), and that an inflationary spiral can occur- due to higher prices in the market, usually profits of companies will increase- meaning they can hire more staff- meaning more people will have income to buy products/services- meaning prices will continue to inflate as demand rises.

Inflation can also be caused by the government. You may have heard of the programme of quantitative easing- essentially money is pumped artificially into the economy to try to stimulate spending. One of the strong arguments against QE is that pumping more money into the economy causes inflation.
To understand this, think of money as a commodity- think gold. The more abundant gold there is, the less its value- and the less abundant it is, the more the value.
Money was easy to come by in Weimar Germany.
Too easy.
Of course a balance must be struck- but QE decreases the value of money, and historically some extreme QE-style programs have led to hyperinflation (think wheelbarrows of money in 1920s Germany), where money became so abundant due to printing of cash that it became worth more in paper than actual purchasing power.

So excess inflation does not sound too appetising- but neither does its opposite, deflation.
But take a nice rest. Have a nap, a little reflection and come back on Tuesday for part two, where we'll expand on deflation and more good stuff. 

SOURCES
24,000 'died because of cold homes' last winter http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2240716/24-000-died-cold-homes-winter-Fears-grow-figure-higher-year-spiralling-bills.html

investopedia.com