Alert to shoppers: Never mind the price, feel the weight

[ssweetpea]

There's probably a locally-owned and operated supermarket near you, find it ? please select: http://www.supervalue.co.nz/



http://www.supervalue.co.nz/SpecialPages/specials.aspx?Week=This

Progressive Enterprises is one of New Zealand's largest and most successful retail organisations owning and operating Countdown, Woolworths and Foodtown supermarket brands.

Progressive is also the franchise co-ordinator for the Fresh Choice and SuperValue banner groups. Wholesaling for these operations is conducted through The Supply Chain.

http://www.progressive.co.nz/our-company/progressive-enterprises

 ... there isn't a Super Value on the North Shore any more or even close. The nearest is Waimauku,Titirangi or Otahuhu.

[nitpicker1]

Woolworths profit rises 15.2% in NZ supermarkets
Home » News » Business
Fri, 25 Feb 2011
News: Business

Australian retailer Woolworths Ltd has reported a 15.2 percent profit rise in its New Zealand supermarket business, which includes Countdown and Woolworths stores, in the six months to December 31 from the same period last year.

Sales of $2.795 billion were up 4.1 percent on last year. The gross margin rose 31 basis points to 22.41 percent. Earnings before interest and tax rose 15.2 percent to $NZ134.3 million. ...

http://www.odt.co.nz/news/business/149285/woolworths-profit-rises-152-nz-supermarkets

meanwhile it's DSE stores profits are 65% down. 

Dammit we'll be back a nation of 100% skinnys and to semaphore or tin cans-and-string communications before we realise what's happening

 

[Magoo]

There profits will be a little less when the supermarket demolished in the Sept earthquake is finished being rebuilt in the village.  Unless we shop out further up Nth Canty or town we have no option but to pour our dosh into their coffers where the prices are rising as we speak.   Once upon a time it was monthly, now it is daily.

[ssweetpea]

FOOD MANUFACTURERS are downsizing their products rather than putting prices up, in a marketing ploy that has left some consumers feeling duped.

...
The size of a bag of potato chips, for example, has in many cases shrunk from 200g to 150 or 160g, but prices have stayed the same. Some brands of toilet rolls used to contain 400 sheets of paper but many now contain just 380. Last August a 350g pack of Milo cost $4.49. Three weeks later a 310g pack at the same store cost the same $4.49.

...

i am looking at a packet of bluebird potato chips as I type - as noted in the quote from 2009 it is a 150g packet but on the back where the nutritional breakdown is they list the serving size as 40g as in 3.75 servings per packet.

I also note in the multi pack of chips I bought last week that the individual packets are just one serving of 18g. (didn't that used to be 20g?) Is the smaller serving size because they are aimed at children's lunch boxes?

My point is who do they think they are fooling?

What is the point of having packet size that doesnt' divide into a whole number of equal servings?

Packets of milo have the same problem, a 530g packet doesn't divide up in to 15g servings without 5g (1 teaspoon) leftover. The 900g tin does divide up into equal servings but the 350g packet again has one teaspoon left over. Try doing the mental arithmatic to compare the prices of those pack sizes.

I am sure they aren't the only examples but those are the ones I have literally sitting in front of me at the moment.

[ssweetpea]

How shoppers are duped into paying more
ALICIA WOOD Last updated 05:00 24/09/2011

They are the unspoken tricks of the trade - the subtle techniques manufacturers employ every day to get shoppers to pay more, for less.

And more often than not, they pass unnoticed.

They can range from widening the opening in your favourite bottle of tomato sauce or tube of toothpaste, so you use a little more with every squirt, to tweaking the size and shape of the product while the price remains the same.

Recent examples show how these tactics have been employed in Australia.

Kellogg's, this year reduced the size of 38 brands by two servings a box - including Sultana Bran, Nutri-Grain and Rice Bubbles.

In 2009, Cadbury reduced the size of a 250-gram block of Dairy Milk chocolate by 50 grams - a 20 per cent reduction.

Likewise, a re-jazzing of Pantene shampoo packaging had the size of bottles shrink by 50 millilitres.

Sometimes the firm gets caught out, as Foster's found when it tried to reduce the size of Cascade beer stubbies from 375 millilitres to 330ml "European-style" bottles - while keeping the good old Australian price.

A consumer backlash soon forced the brewer to fatten the bottles back up.

So whether the technique passes unnoticed or not depends on the appearance. An old advertising maxim is that nothing matters more than the package.

"The package is the last five seconds of any good campaign," said University of Sydney Business School marketing professor Charles Areni.

And so packaging becomes one of the strongest tools in a marketer's arsenal to trick us into consuming more, more often.

The 'large-opening' approach

Deceptive or not, we continue to buy - even after realising we've been duded.

"A fairly straightforward and legitimate way to increase sales is with a large opening," said Ken Miller, emeritus professor of marketing at the University of Technology, Sydney.

"But customers get savvy about this pretty quickly," he said.

Marketers have used this technique on tomato sauce, toothpaste and soft drink cans in Australia, thinking that people will finish a product more quickly and therefore buy more.

This has been done in both subtle and obvious ways - the latter exemplified by the soft drink Solo, which marketed the enlarged opening on its can to allow the drinker to "slam it down" even faster.

The subtle approach is more common, but said Dr Miller, this is a quick fix.

A person who accidentally squeezes too much sauce out of a bottle because the opening is 10 per cent larger will not make the same mistake again.

"You might get caught the first time, but you soon realise you don't need that much," he said.

Playing with your mind

But quantity does not always play a role in consumers' decision making. Sometimes, shoppers will take their cues on what is an appropriate amount from the way food is packaged.

Dr Areni said Tim Tams were the best example of a company - in this case Arnott's biscuits - using packaging to encourage a customer to eat more.

"Unlike other cookies, that are packaged in partitions, these are packaged in a row - so you go right the way through," he said.

"Other biscuits have a series of rows, and it implies that is the stopping point."

The good news for marketers is that, as far as memory goes, we as consumers are like goldfish.

"To predict what a person will buy, the best indication is the list from their previous shopping trip," Dr Areni said.

Product downsizing

Making package sizes slightly smaller - while keeping prices the same - is one of the most popular ways to encourage you to throw more items in the trolley.

As shown above, Cadbury, Pantene and Kellogg's are all companies that have subtly downsized.

CHOICE spokeswoman Ingrid Just said this tactic was used because consumers generally were more observant of price than they were of size.

"This is why we would say always check the unit price," Ms Just said.

- Sydney Morning Herald

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/5675932/How-shoppers-are-duped-into-paying-more

I think we can file this under "No shit Sherlock".
The age of this thread gives some idea how long ago some of us spotted that trick.

[Ferney]

Krispa did it around 20 years ago with chips.  They put out a bag that was slightly smaller than the oppositions so it was on the shelves for less.   It worked and was a very successful marketing idea.   It wasn't about ripping the consumer off as everyone could read the weight clearly printed on the pack.  Most people probably didn't bother to look.......but whos fault is that.....not the manufacturer. 

Companies have a choice to either put up the price as their raw ingredients have increased (which can put the purchaser off) or downsize it and leave the price the same. 

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

• US supermarkets ditch self-serve checkouts

(a news story from Associated Press on the NZ Herald website)

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Progressive Enterprises is one of New Zealand's largest and most successful retail organisations owning and operating Countdown, Woolworths and Foodtown supermarket brands.

I've kinda gone off Progressive Enterprises owned supermarkets since I discovered they are refusing to stock New Zealand produce and grocery products in many of their Australian supermarkets.

Mind you, the way Heinz is rapidly shutting down their Aussie plants and transferring everything to their two MEGA Heinz Watties plants here in NZ at Hastings, I guess Progressive will have to stop stocking the Heinz brand in Oz if they are that anal about NOT stocking NZ products.

[ssweetpea]

They are at it again.

Shrinking feeling as manufacturers trim their sails
LOIS CAIRNS Last updated 05:00 06/05/2012

Manufacturers continue to hit consumers with price rises by stealth by cutting product sizes.

The world's biggest producer of men's razors, Gillette, is the latest culprit cutting the number of replacement cartridges in its Mach3 Turbo packs from five to four while keeping the price the same, effectively a 20 per cent price increase.

It is the latest in a long line of companies to try to avoid the consumer backlash that often comes with price rises by keeping the price the same but reducing quantities.

In recent years chocolate, ice-cream, biscuits, potato chips, cereals, yoghurt, butter, coffee and even toilet paper have all been down-sized.

Cooking oil is another product that has recently undergone a stealth price rise, with bottle sizes of some brands falling from 500g to 450g and from 2 litres to 1.8l.

Some consumers have picked up on the changes and have taken to online message boards to voice their displeasure.

"Reducing volume/weight but keeping the price the same somehow fools people," one supermarket shopper posted last week on a noticeboard. "Not many people notice 10-15 per cent volume/weight changes."

Consumer New Zealand adviser Maggie Edwards said shoppers had to be smart if they wanted to avoid falling into the downsizing trap, and pay close attention to weights and measures on packaging.

"You need to check unit prices, even with things that you've got comfortable and familiar with," she said.

Unit pricing – displaying the price of goods per unit measure, for example the cost per 100 grams – was introduced at New World and Pak'n'Save supermarkets two years ago so that customers could better compare the price of goods between between brands and packet sizes.

The problem, Edwards said, was that unit prices were printed in small type and it was still often difficult to compare prices. "It's definitely a step in the right direction, but you do still have to do some mental calculations."

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/6867647/Shrinking-feeling-as-manufacturers-trim-their-sails

[nitpicker1]

not to forget Panadol. My only and occassional medication:  $1.99 at my supermarket -  packets were supposed to contain 10 tabs BUT contained 1 empty bubble...

Told my doc about it when I went for a hearing check, she gave me script for 100 paracetamol, $3

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

They are at it again.

Shrinking feeling as manufacturers trim their sails
LOIS CAIRNS Last updated 05:00 06/05/2012

And notice too how the Chief Executive of the NZ Food & Grocery Council (basically a spin-doctor/professional-bullshit-artist organisation), former Nats MP Katherine Rich often comes up with excuses in press releases (bullshit papers) from that organisation.

It was interesting last Sunday to see Katherine Rich trying to throw shit on the concept of people teaming together to purchase cattle beasts, then get them home-killed and in the process reduce their meat costs by a huge amount. No doubt Katherine Rich was pushing the lines she did on behalf of the members of the NZ Food & Grocery Council, which would include companies with vested interests such as supermarkets and their supply chains.

[ssweetpea]

Do you have any idea of the rules surrounding home killed meat?

For example - you can not sell it, trade it, use it to pay someone (like you would give a mate a crate of beer for a small job). You can't even use it to cater for a party.

The only why you can legally "go halves" in home killed meat (which ironically still has to be processed by a licenced butcher) is to sell (or buy) a share of the beast before it is killed. Something we did several times when MrSp worked with someone with a 10 acre block.

[nitpicker1]

Do you have any idea of the rules surrounding home killed meat?

For example - you can not sell it, trade it, use it to pay someone (like you would give a mate a crate of beer for a small job). You can't even use it to cater for a party.

The only why you can legally "go halves" in home killed meat (which ironically still has to be processed by a licenced butcher) is to sell (or buy) a share of the beast before it is killed. Something we did several times when MrSp worked with someone with a 10 acre block.

closing very soon: http://www.trademe.co.nz/business-farming-industry/farming-forestry/livestock/sheep/auction-471862961.htm

 this could be a good buy for a syndicate of neighbours with the old 1/4 paradise,  Price is per lamb but buyer must take all.  


 Closes: 1 hr 28 mins from posting time
  

not the breed I would choose for meat...

[nitpicker1]

Bananas via internet becoming popular

Thu, 21 Jun 2012
News: Dunedin

 Dunedin consumers are letting their fingers do the walking: Countdown's online grocery shopping service has experienced double-digit growth in the area in the past year.

Countdown national online manager Adam Hudson said hundreds of Dunedin residents were using the online shopping service.

"As it becomes more normal [to shop online], more people use it," he said.

"There's a snowball effect: when someone sees their neighbour uses [the service] and trusts it, they are more likely to listen to their neighbour [and start using the service], rather than Countdown simply telling them to use it."

Mr Hudson said a range of people used the service, including parents in Auckland sending food parcels to their children studying in Dunedin.

Although Dunedin residents had had the option of buying dry goods from Christchurch for more than 10 years, the full product range had only been offered from the Andersons Bay Rd Countdown for the past two years.

Mr Hudson said during that period, Countdown had seen "very strong growth" in the number of people using the service.

"As more people realise it makes no difference whether you shop in-store or online, more and more people are using [the online service]."

The Andersons Bay Rd Countdown was the only grocery retailer in Dunedin offering online grocery shopping.

It employed 12 "personal shoppers" who gathered and prepared customers' groceries for them.

Customers could pick up their groceries or have them delivered.

The service was available to customers as far afield as Twizel and Winton and cost between $3.25 and $25, depending on the amount bought and the delivery location.

The service was so in-depth, customers had the option of choosing how ripe their bananas were.

As for customer preferences, Mr Hudson said it was the same throughout New Zealand.

"It's a mix of fresh food and the basics. Wherever you go, everyone's buying broccoli, bananas and milk."

From mid July, Countdown would offer a second online shopping outlet at its new South Dunedin store.

Food and Grocery Council chief executive Katherine Rich said the market for online grocery shopping had increased significantly recently and was going to grow in the future.

However, she warned consumers to beware of places offering cheap groceries through auction sites.

"If it's super cheap, then there's probably a very good reason for this.

Some importers are parallel-importing offshore quantities which might be close to expiry, have outdated labelling or be made more cheaply for completely different tastes and markets.

"We support the growth of legitimate online retailing through Foodstuffs and Countdown, but we are keeping a close eye on fly-by-nighters because often consumers are not getting what they think they are buying," she said.

Foodstuffs retail outlets Pak'n Save and New World do not offer online shopping. Foodstuffs South Island retail operations general manager Alan Malcolmson said while the company did not have any "concrete plans", it was monitoring the market closely.

- Timothy Brown

http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/214031/bananas-internet-becoming-popular

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Pricing spies trespassed by supermarket

By KRIS DANDO - Kapi-Mana News | 10:28AM - Tuesday, 28 August 2012

THE OWNER of New World Porirua has begun issuing trespass orders after what he calls the theft of his intellectual property — his prices.

Tony McNeil says Porirua has the most competitive supermarket environment in the country. While he acknowledges price-checking is common among the stores, he says it has become ridiculous due to his own aggressive pricing.

"We've been kicking people out of the store regularly in the past two weeks. They are coming in with huge lists and spending up to two hours checking prices. One lady told me she was checking on things for her son's 21st party, but there was dog food on her list."

"Another was in our health and beauty aisle for over an hour [last] week."

Mr McNeil is adamant it is not Pak 'n Save but Progressive Enterprises — who own Countdown — who are employing people to price-check. He trespassed two people last week and is confident of banning at least six more soon.

He says he has extensive video footage of the actions of the price-checkers, who use long lists, as well as cellphones to record prices. "We don't mind people comparing prices, we accept that, but not to this level. It's happening every day and they are blatant. This is my intellectual property, it's industrial espionage."

Countdown's assistant store manager Lowell Robinson says none of their employees regularly check out the competitors' prices.

"We don't have enough hours in the day to be doing that."

He says it is "doubtful" that Progressive's head office would sanction such actions either.

Progressive's head office in Auckland did not provide a comment before our deadline.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/local-papers/kapi-mana-news/7559096/Pricing-spies-trespassed-by-supermarket

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Behind the supermarket bargains

By ADAM DUDDING - Fairfax NZ News | 5:00AM - Sunday, 16 February 2014

"CLIFFING", "ROGERING" and other bully-boy tactics... Have the business practices of Australia's supermarket giants finally arrived in New Zealand?

On Wednesday, Labour MP Shane Jones let rip, accusing the Australian-owned supermarket giant Progressive Enterprises of bullying suppliers and demanding they hand over cash if they wanted to keep their products on the shelves of Countdown supermarkets.

Jones' attack, made under the protection of parliamentary privilege, was full of explosive words such as "blackmail", "extortion" and "Tony Soprano" — and it went off.

Progressive flatly denied the accusations, but Prime Minister John Key said he supported an inquiry and the Commerce Commission said it would look into it.

Jones also played the patriot card, hammering home the idea that a brutish Australian company was importing bully-boy tactics from across the Tasman.

His most damning accusation was that the supermarket's cash demands were intended to compensate retrospectively for past losses.

Whether that detail is proven or not, many Kiwi shoppers may be surprised to learn of the tactics already accepted as normal in the industry.

Progressive's managing director Dave Chambers said negotiations with suppliers were always "robust" but "fair". Yet as one insider put it, when suppliers and supermarkets do deals, it's the big retailer that holds all the cards.

Naturally, supermarkets want to buy goods from suppliers at the lowest possible price, in pursuit of their twin goals of low prices on the shelf and decent margins, but negotiations aren't just about the wholesale price.

If suppliers want their products to feature in the supermarket advertising flyers, or if they want their product in a special bin or at the end of an aisle, they're expected to pay for it.

They also have to cough up if they want to access the data the supermarket has collected from the use of its loyalty cards.

Charging for in-store marketing and data seems reasonable enough, but there's a bigger sting: when supermarkets slash the price of a product to pull customers through the door, it's generally the supplier who takes the hit.

Imagine, for example, that a supplier can sell a can of beans to a supermarket for $1, which gets marked up to, say, $1.26 on the shelf.

If the supermarket wants to put it on special at 76c the supplier's cut will drop from $1 down to 50c, but the supermarket retains the same margin.

Sometimes, suppliers volunteer a price-cut as part of a short-term marketing drive, but according to insiders, it's not uncommon for a supermarket to lure customers inside with a fantastic deal, then bluntly inform the supplier that they'll have to absorb the price-cut themselves.

If the supplier doesn't like what's offered, supermarkets can start to apply subtle, or not-so-subtle, pressure. A non-compliant supplier might find their product gets moved from a plum spot at eye-level to the relative Siberia of the bottom shelf, or that instead of being stocked five cans wide at the front of the shelf, there might be only two cans visible instead.

They might find that the next time they offer a 50c price-cut, only 20c or 30c is passed on to the customer, and the supermarket pockets the difference. The ultimate sanction, of course, is to banish a product from the store entirely.

Jones' Aussie-bashing in Parliament at times sounded like xenophobic rabble-rousing, but in fact there may be a genuine trans-Tasman culture-clash at play here.

Insiders who spoke to the Sunday Star-Times say the culture of Progressive took a sharp turn for the worse late last year, with the arrival of a hard-nosed senior executive from Australia.

Before then, they say, Progressive was no scarier at the negotiating table than its New Zealand-owned rival Foodstuffs, which runs stores including Pak'nSave and New World.

Recently, though, some suppliers have said their interactions with Progressive have been noticeably more intimidating. There are reports of meetings where a supplier was left to sweat alone in a meeting room for half an hour, before being delivered an unsmiling ultimatum.

This, say the sources, just isn't how things are done in New Zealand. Allegations of bullying of suppliers by Australia's two big supermarket chains Coles and Woolworths (owner of Progressive) have made headlines in Australia for years.

In 2011, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the Coles HQ in Melbourne was known as "Battlestar Galactica", and that suppliers had come to dread being summoned to meetings. Suppliers spoke of a practice at Coles known as "cliffing" — where a supplier would be forced to bid against other suppliers for the right to shelf space.

If they didn't bid high enough, they'd lose their space completely — thrown off the "cliff". There were even more colourful terms for general price negotiations with supermarkets — "rogering" or "assuming the position".

In other words, suppliers were expected to "bend over and take what's coming".

In a kind of worldwide cultural contagion, the Sydney Morning Herald reported Coles' hardball tactics were driven by its manager Ian McLeod, himself a recent import to Australia from the UK, where he had been a senior manager of the low-cost Asda supermarkets.

Tales of bullying of suppliers by supermarkets in the UK have been rife for years, including retailers demanding multimillion-dollar payments, imposing fines for food wasted at no fault of the supplier, and changing contract terms at short notice.

In Australia, the consumer watchdog (ACCC) is mid-way through an investigation into supermarket bullying. In June last year the UK appointed a supermarket "adjudicator" with the power to impose fines and demand public apologies from big chains who trample on suppliers.

It remains to be seen whether New Zealand's relatively genteel supermarket sector is going to need the same sort of treatment.

COUNTDOWN FIGHTS BOOZE-SALES BAN

Countdown has appealed its Takapuna store's seven-day suspension from selling alcohol, imposed after a heavily intoxicated customer was served beer.

The ban had been due to start last week.

The supermarket was handed one of the heaviest off-licence suspensions on record after selling beer to Adam McBride, who was so drunk he could barely stand, in August 2012.

The Alcohol Regulatory and Licensing Authority found it guilty of breaching the Sale of Liquor Act and stripped it of its licence from February 10th-17th.

An industry insider said the suspension could cost the company a six-figure sum but Countdown was still selling alcohol last week after taking its fight to the High Court.

The penalty has been suspended until the appeal is heard.

A date in the High Court has not yet been set.

The appeal will also cover Countdown Takapuna staff member Paul Tu'ungafasi's 30-day suspension of his general manager's certificate.

Related news story:

 • Supermarkets' food pricing attacked

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/9727417/Behind-the-supermarket-bargains


Supermarket shopping may become patriotic

By SEAN PLUNKET - The Dominion Post | 5:00AM - Saturday, 15 February 2014

I ABHOR supermarket shopping. Were it not for the unavoidable fact that I like all of you need to eat, feed my dog, wipe my bottom and occasionally clean my house, I would never go to the supermarket.

When I do, I try to make it fast and efficient, 15 to 20 minutes maximum.

I don't have Fly Buys or a Onecard and I don't use coupon booklets or try to buy on special. That stuff takes time and time is the one thing I like spending less than money in the neon-soaked aisles full of dithering consumers.

But supermarkets are good in one regard. They reduce the total time I need to spend shopping, which is another activity I abhor. Because the supermarket has lined up on shelves all the stuff I need to sustain me in one place, and provided carts to put it all in before funnelling me through one of numerous checkouts, it is actually doing me a favour.

Until this week that was pretty much all I thought about supermarkets, big garish places with parking spaces and lots of stuff I need all in one place.

Many of you (I suspect men in particular) probably feel the same way but I know others (and this is borne out by industry research) are fastidious when it comes to knowing who has what items cheapest and where is the best place to get this or that with the biggest petrol discount and all the other promotional stuff. New Zealanders are in fact the most discount-oriented, price-sensitive supermarket shoppers on the planet.

But this week Shane Jones and his "Sopranos" speech in Parliament might just have elevated supermarket shopping beyond the most soul-destroying, mind-numbingly boring activity on earth to the most visceral and direct act of patriotism any of us can engage in. His as yet unsubstantiated claim made under parliamentary privilege that one of our two big supermarket chains is extorting money from suppliers by asking for retrospective payments and threatening banishment from its shelves for those who don't pay up was always going to grab headlines.

Throw in the fact that the company (which vigorously denies the claims) is Australian-owned and you have a populist political scandal made in a Winston Peters wet dream. Never mind that the specifics of Mr Jones's allegations which have been tabled in Parliament are being kept secret because some bureaucrat is afraid of being sued, "Aislegate" is going off like a punnet of old yoghurt in the dairy section. Because it is easy to click a button on your computer, thousands of people have joined a Facebook page to boycott the Australian chain, and TV reporters have found dozens if not scores of housewives who say it might make them think twice about which aisles they push their trolley down. Because pretty well everyone shops at the supermarket, everyone can feel outraged, have an opinion or take direct action.

And it isn't like this protest against an unjust, unfair system is going to put you at any risk. You don't have to jump into Wellington Harbour and wave a banner next to a seismic research ship or camp out in a town square and bleat about the 1 percent. All you have to do is either keep shopping where you have been and feel virtuous or swap supermarkets and become part of the movement.

I'll probably need to see a bit more hard proof before I become a checkout revolutionary and given that Mr Jones's formal complaint is now before the Commerce Commission, the process could become rather slow and boring during the next few weeks.

To be honest there's another reason I'm likely to swim against the tide. If thousands do abandon the Australian chain, its stores will be much less crowded, they will probably have more parks closer to the doors and it will probably make the stuff on its shelves cheaper. I'll be able to spend less money and less time buying dog food, toilet paper, washing powder and food than I have before and, as you know, I abhor supermarket shopping.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/columnists/sean-plunket/9723793/Supermarket-shopping-may-become-patriotic

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Dita De Boni: We need Government-owned supermarkets

The New Zealand Herald | 9:30AM - Friday, February 21, 2014



IT'S A WEEK in which one longs to stick it to the supermarkets, to be sure. If they are not making outrageous demands of their suppliers, they are banding together with "big food" to lobby pliant politicians to stay well clear of effective (read: costly to them) anti-obesity measures.

They pump cheap alcohol into communities with gay abandon, and essentially hold the food-buying public to ransom by dividing billions of dollars in grocery sales between them.

But what to do? Families can frequent farmers' markets, speciality marts, even grow their own veg, but avoiding the big-brand supermarkets is impossible for most. Instead, we've collectively developed a sort of Stockholm Syndrome, believing 40c off a tin of baked beans or tray of chicken thighs makes everything fine and dandy.

Well, today I present an idea that would not only irk the supermarkets but also cause much foaming at the mouth among free-market advocates — a combination of outcomes that makes my proposition almost unbeatable from the outset.

The idea is this: government-owned supermarkets. Wooo! that's got a few of you going, no doubt. It could be the last straw if state-subsidised solar panels have already put you in the hypertensive danger zone. But while the idea sounds outlandish, I beg you to consider a few of its positive facets.

First, New Zealand suppliers would get a better deal. There's no doubt that some supermarkets deliver bargains for consumers, but it's not the supermarket that takes the hit when prices are low, it's the poor supplier. The same supplier whose order can be changed, augmented or scrapped at any time, and who can be billed for all sorts of extra costs. A government-run supermarket, with transparency as part of its modus operandi, would be required to foster consistency and decency with suppliers, as well as its customers and staff — a genuine ethical choice for consumers.

It would also be required to ensure local food gets a fair run alongside cheap, nutrient-deficient imports.

The way I see it, a government-owned supermarket chain (KiwiShop? GovtShop? Godzone Grocer?) would need to pay its way, but not necessarily turn a profit - no more rorting of the poorly paid Kiwi workforce to placate shareholders.

Freedom from profit would also give the government room to enact some of its anti-obesity ideas without upsetting those who believe it is their God-given right to scull Coca-Cola, scarf pies, and ignore that "5+ a day" nonsense. You could sell fruit and vegetables without GST added, for example; you could even provide food coupons as part of a benefit payment. Plain-packaged cigarettes, restrictions on soda sales to minors — it would be a great market testing ground.

By God, there'd be objections. But in a "free market", shouldn't the Government be free to compete against big Australian interests in ensuring a reasonably-priced supply of quality foodstuffs to the populace? It's already happening in banking, after all, and competitors have not collapsed in a screaming heap.

Many other countries regulate their supermarkets heavily; ours seem to be largely left to their own devices, getting a few wet bus ticket-slaps only when it's unavoidable. The best solution to this situation can only be more competition - ideally provided by a party with the people's best interests at heart.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11206513