Not dead! Thinking about the BOGOF
Summer is coming to an end and most of my photography jobs for the year are done. The allotment is also winding down and Agnes is back at nursery 2 days a week. So I've got time to write a blog entry!
Of late I've been thinking a bit about society and some of our modern day behaviours - in particular bahaviours I don't like. It seems to me that the modern day marketing phenomenon of the BOGOF (buy one get one free) sales promotion, pretty much both plays on and encourages some of our most appalling excesses. Especially where it applies to food products there is almost nothing good to be said about it.
In our land of virtually epidemic obesity the likes of McDonalds and Burger King have offered BOGOF deals in recent times. Given that many customers are individuals, or even if not, will prefer to eat different meals how can this be doing anything other than encouraging massive over-consumption. Even in supermarkets BOGOFs are generally applied mainly to food at the junkier end of the spectrum (I'm not making this up - see P21 of this report by the NCC (National Consumer Council)) and as supermarkets know that the BOGOF is one of their most successful wheezes, it follows that they also know that they are encouraging unhealthy diets. And of course the usual rubbish about simply providing choice will not wash. In this case they are not providing choice they are providing temptation - "not only are we going to offer you something bad, we are going to offer it you again for free" - crack dealers employ the same methods. The supermarkets' offer is based on a sound understanding of a human psychological weakness - greed and they both exploit it and encourage it. In fact the BOGOF does more than just encourage people to overeat, they corrupt our attitudes to food, reinforcing even further the idea that quantity is to be valued over quality - is this really the message we should be sending out to our children? At a deeper level we probably should be asking why it is in the interests of the retailers to do this - and I suspect the answer is control - deep down retailers would like a homogenised, predictable and even directable set of consumers, ready to imbibe whatever the factory can be optimised to produce.
And if that isn't enough, BOGOFS also create waste - not only at the level of the individual, who maybe never does get around to eating that second box of cakes before they go stale, but also among producers and wholesalers. BOGOFS create unnatural peaks in demand that are hard for suppliers to meet and for retailers to forecast accurately, creating inefficiencies in the system and leftover unsold stock. They are also another way of getting suppliers to accept lower prices - "brand X gave us a special rate for our BOGOF last week so you need to do the same this week". I guess if you think that lower prices at any price is the way to go then this is a good thing, but if you believe that in some cases pricing has gone too far in favour of the retailer at the expense of the producer (as I do) then you won't.
Of course I'm sure that the supermarkets would wish to point out that they are offering value and choice, but they aren't. Actually the very poorest in society will not be able to shop around for BOGOF deals or take part in them (being without freezers or the funds to make multiple puchases and stockpile for the biggest savings) and would be far better off with continuous slight price reductions. BOGOFs further increase the divide between the very worst off in society and the rest. Because of the massive skew they create in the market, albeit for a short period, they also make overall pricing of food less transparent, particularly given that the basic price of a BOGOF item may have been raised anyway to offset the cost of the "free" second item.
In all of this I don't blame individuals for taking part in BOGOFs. As a pragmatist I admit to BOGOFing myself, but I feel sure that it would serve the greater good to be rid of them. What is required is a collective decision to do away with them, which is why I am going to start an online petition to the Prime Minister to, at the very least, condemn the BOGOF and to call upon the major supermarkets to agree to do away with this cynical practice.
Of late I've been thinking a bit about society and some of our modern day behaviours - in particular bahaviours I don't like. It seems to me that the modern day marketing phenomenon of the BOGOF (buy one get one free) sales promotion, pretty much both plays on and encourages some of our most appalling excesses. Especially where it applies to food products there is almost nothing good to be said about it.
In our land of virtually epidemic obesity the likes of McDonalds and Burger King have offered BOGOF deals in recent times. Given that many customers are individuals, or even if not, will prefer to eat different meals how can this be doing anything other than encouraging massive over-consumption. Even in supermarkets BOGOFs are generally applied mainly to food at the junkier end of the spectrum (I'm not making this up - see P21 of this report by the NCC (National Consumer Council)) and as supermarkets know that the BOGOF is one of their most successful wheezes, it follows that they also know that they are encouraging unhealthy diets. And of course the usual rubbish about simply providing choice will not wash. In this case they are not providing choice they are providing temptation - "not only are we going to offer you something bad, we are going to offer it you again for free" - crack dealers employ the same methods. The supermarkets' offer is based on a sound understanding of a human psychological weakness - greed and they both exploit it and encourage it. In fact the BOGOF does more than just encourage people to overeat, they corrupt our attitudes to food, reinforcing even further the idea that quantity is to be valued over quality - is this really the message we should be sending out to our children? At a deeper level we probably should be asking why it is in the interests of the retailers to do this - and I suspect the answer is control - deep down retailers would like a homogenised, predictable and even directable set of consumers, ready to imbibe whatever the factory can be optimised to produce.
And if that isn't enough, BOGOFS also create waste - not only at the level of the individual, who maybe never does get around to eating that second box of cakes before they go stale, but also among producers and wholesalers. BOGOFS create unnatural peaks in demand that are hard for suppliers to meet and for retailers to forecast accurately, creating inefficiencies in the system and leftover unsold stock. They are also another way of getting suppliers to accept lower prices - "brand X gave us a special rate for our BOGOF last week so you need to do the same this week". I guess if you think that lower prices at any price is the way to go then this is a good thing, but if you believe that in some cases pricing has gone too far in favour of the retailer at the expense of the producer (as I do) then you won't.
Of course I'm sure that the supermarkets would wish to point out that they are offering value and choice, but they aren't. Actually the very poorest in society will not be able to shop around for BOGOF deals or take part in them (being without freezers or the funds to make multiple puchases and stockpile for the biggest savings) and would be far better off with continuous slight price reductions. BOGOFs further increase the divide between the very worst off in society and the rest. Because of the massive skew they create in the market, albeit for a short period, they also make overall pricing of food less transparent, particularly given that the basic price of a BOGOF item may have been raised anyway to offset the cost of the "free" second item.
In all of this I don't blame individuals for taking part in BOGOFs. As a pragmatist I admit to BOGOFing myself, but I feel sure that it would serve the greater good to be rid of them. What is required is a collective decision to do away with them, which is why I am going to start an online petition to the Prime Minister to, at the very least, condemn the BOGOF and to call upon the major supermarkets to agree to do away with this cynical practice.
posted by Jon Brooke at 10:20 pm
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