Selfsufficientish.com

boboff wrote:Indeed, but how does marketing come into it? Surely it's just cheap? It's not Notional, it IS cheap. Selling things cheap is not clever marketing, clever marketinig is about selling people aspirations, it's not Notional, it's not Clever, and I suspect whether it could really be considered marketing, but apart from that I am with you 100%

Well let's see. I'm not very clever but I do try to think about these things.

Firstly, have you heard of loss leaders? Get the customer in and they spend more than just 25p on a pint of milk. An old trick. They say "cheapest shitty white loaf in town" and fine, you get your bargain. Do you then go to another supermarket for their "cheapest crappy wine in town"? and then onto another for their "cheapest tasteless apples in town"?

No, you buy everything else in there, including the dozens of other products they're making a killing on. Only certain things are cheap, to drag you in. And now nothing is priced, people tend not to look at the shelf tickets, which are often too confusing.

Also, it's doubtful whether milk is a loss leader, given that they screw farmers into the ground. The supermarkets no doubt make a profit on it; you pay to subsidise farmers to produce it, through your taxes and thus subsidies. In America it's twice as bad - the usual socialism for the rich; subsidies are humungous.

On top of that, there are unfactored costs. The cost to the environment of bringing onions from New Zealand. The cost of bringing flowers from ethnically-cleansed areas of the West Bank. The cost in health to workers in (name your) plantations, where crops are drenched in pesticides.

Then of course I mentioned jobs. So your taxes go to support those that were working but now are not because of Trashco etc.

I read somewhere or other that British supermarkets enjoy some of the highest profit margins in Europe. They can't achieve this by selling cheap. The more I think about, the more I see how they get others to do their work for them. The trend towards self-service check-outs is one sign.

What else? I'm sure many can think of more reasons to avoid supermarkets. I don't really need any more. Sigh...

One more,and perhaps the most important reason of all...................they are all,without exception, bloody ugly.

My views are fairly well known on this, and its not the time to go into it again.

I have sold to Supermarkets for many years, both Grocery lines and seasonal food lines, I have sold to all of them, plus most of the big high street names. It's very hard work. BUT I and the companies that I have worked for have made good money from it. Where I have lost business, it was as I was not competitive. Ce la Vie.

I suspect as most views are so "anti" my view point might be swayed a little by virtue of the Devils Advocate in me.

Ethics is a funny thing, the Co-op are big into that arn't they, but they were the only Supermarket ever to get me to Travel from Plymouth to Manchester in the snow in January just so they could tell me face to face they wouln't be carrying my lines that year, what a bloody waste of time for an MD that was!

Hum, this is an interesting conversation.
There are already quite a few twists to this discussion and I thought I would add at least one more. While I can quite agree that most people only care about getting cheap food, I would like to simply ask how much this will cost in NHS bills with the great rise in obesity and all associated deseases? It feels to me that what is given on one side will have to be taken back on another and it may not be very much fun and it will probably cost a great lot of money. Maybe if the food was more expensive because of better quality, there would not be this overfeeding frenzy that we can see with many. It all feels very short sighted.

The irony of that post sat next to an Ad on this site for "all you can eat in your city" "70% off GROUPON"

T***o & Sainsbury & Morrisons all run programs to give schools sports and other equipment.

Big Al's Kebab shop in a high Street near you do not.

You also forgot that most crime is undertaken after people get drunk from Wine or beer from Trasco, so lets land them with the police budget as well......

Bahh, I've had enough of this.

T***o & Sainsbury & Morrisons all run programs to give schools sports and other equipment.

Big Al's Kebab shop in a high Street near you do not.


Would that be the 'Spend £10, and instead of a 1p in the £ discount,we'll give you it in vouchers that your school can use to buy the stuff that should have been financed by the local authority Trashco bribed to get the planning permission to build in the first place?.............ingenious.......but still ugly.

Well Bobof, you have another good point in your new comments. The society we live in is certainly responsible for many things like over eating or over drinking, and it is easier for all of us to point the finger at the big companies which are benefiting. We are all responsible of our own choices, but some people are maybe too weak to say no to temptation, so should temptation be so big?

For ' too weak' d'you mean, lacking in money,time,knowledge(perm any one of these three)?

oldjerry wrote: Substitute 'They' for 'we', 'their' for 'our','them' for 'us' etc. etc. and I couldn't agree more.

Thing is OJ you are 'we' if you use the NHS, fire, Police, schooling, refuse collection, street lighting, the benefits system, tax credits, free school milk, receive a pension, public transport etc. It's very difficult to be completely outside of our society and our society is funded by tax generated from business. Simples

My problem with them is why grow potatoes in Egypt and waste oil transporting the feckers when they can be grown closer to home, much closer to home. Same with all the other crap. It tastes rubbish too.

Shrinkwrapped apples for fecks sake... wth, why shrink wrap 4 apples together... good idea... waste of packaging and a nice dose of toxins from the clingfilm seeping into the apple. Nice!

Why can't UK supermarkets take a leaf out of a US supermarket such as Trader Joes' book?

hello there ,

supermarket expansion is what the governments want's ,rip us all off by taxes so that we can only afford cheap food , supplied by ........supermarkets. if the governements would f@# off and not make us pay for their own F@ ups we could all by organic
food , if we wanted . But the way it is is that we cannot do so .

Next step is take let us eat grass and sawdust and let us say it tastes nice , all ready happening by Unilever , Blue band bread sold in Holland contains fibres ! Sawdust .

regards ,,

Paul

TheGoodEarth wrote:

oldjerry wrote: Substitute 'They' for 'we', 'their' for 'our','them' for 'us' etc. etc. and I couldn't agree more.

Thing is OJ you are 'we' if you use the NHS, fire, Police, schooling, refuse collection, street lighting, the benefits system, tax credits, free school milk, receive a pension, public transport etc. It's very difficult to be completely outside of our society and our society is funded by tax generated from business. Simples

And yet the poorest pay a far higher proportion of their income in tax than your business men . And ,of course few of 'them'use either 'our' NHS or 'our' state school system .,

oldjerry wrote:For ' too weak' d'you mean, lacking in money,time,knowledge(perm any one of these three)?

There are lots of things in supermarkets that are a lot more expensive than people think, like ready meals, so I would not say lack of money. Lack of time maybe, but you do with your time what you want to do and I would rather spend some time in my kitchen to cook a meal than to watch Eastenders or Coronation Street... Lack of knowledge, probably for many but not all... But we all get tempted by something and if it is cheap enough it is difficult to resist that packet of crisps or that chocolate bar... I am sure we have all been there many times... But this is going well beyond supermarkets, they only do what others do, they tickle our weaknesses.