Secret code on your supermarket products revealed
Figuring out which products at your supermarket were homebrand and which products weren’t used to be a relatively simple task. But, as News.com.au reports, a new breed of private label product are fooling shoppers in supermarkets across Australia.
Neilsen figures show private labels like Woolworths Essentials and Coles Brand now make up one in five of the packaged products available in Australian supermarket, and these deceptively named products are delivering big profit margins.
“For some consumers, private labels carry a stigma of being cheap and nasty,” retail expert Gary Mortimer from Queensland University of Technology told News.com.au.
“So developing a phantom brand, with no connection to a retailer, provides consumers with a product that looks like a national brand but still at a great price.”
Marketers have praised the supermarket’s strategy as a clever way to get shoppers to hand over more for homebrand level products without even realising.
But some sections of the industry have criticised this smoke and mirrors approach to sales, especially when it comes to products available in liquor stores.
The Winemakers Federation of Australia (WFA) has been lobbying against this behaviours for quite some time, arguing supermarkets should be forced to disclose their ownership.
“If [identifying the label] is not an issue in the mind of the consumer, why have they (retailers) resisted so much in doing it?” the WFA’s then-chief executive Paul Evans told the AFR in 2015.
Coles defended this practice, with spokesman Blair Speedy telling News.com.au: “Coles works with winemakers across Australia to bring a range of top quality, exclusive products to our customers. This includes wines made exclusively for Coles by small and family-owned winemakers with generations of experience in the wine industry, such as Pikes, Jim Barry, Calabria, Punt Road and Yalumba.”
So how, do you tell if Coles and Woolies are behind the bottle?
Well, the trick is to look at the address. If you see “Pinnacle Drink” or “James Busby Wines” in the small print, the product was made by Woolworths or Coles.
Will you take this advice? Where do you do your weekly shop? Let us know in the comments.