What's mildly irritating you today?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Carruthers, look at it as a gift for people like yourself who can see passed their marketing ploys, you can feel the self satisfaction of not being fooled. Then you can giggle all smug like at the checkout, when you spot shoppers who made the mistake.
This sort of thing has become part of marketing because everyone is trying to live their life on a dead run, no time to read the EULA. We sign contracts with copious fine print, but nobody ever reads it except the lawyers when there's a dispute. LJ can probably tell you how many people buy a car, one of the big commitments in most people's lives, and sign without reading the contracts.

I went into the supermarket and right inside the door was a huge display of berries. They'd set up a stepped like bleacher seating table, covered with fabric, about 12 ft long, with blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, etc. Half a dozen large signs said, "buy one, get one free". Now this wasn't a slapped together display, it had to be designed and planned in detail. Nowhere anywhere near this display was the PRICE. Do you think they forgot? I don't think so. Since I was planning on buying blueberries anyway, I just picked up twice as many, but I'm sure their marketing people think they conned me.

That mini Tesco sounds like what we call convenience stores, WAWA is the local biggie. Park right at the door, grab something you need, pay a premium for the convenience, and on your way. These have become the regular morning on the way to work stop for millions. Coffee, maybe a pack of smokes or a pastry. Sometimes something for lunch if you know you'll be busy at lunch time. When the market has bananas for 49 cents a lb, the WAWA will charge 70 cents for one banana, but in winter you can leave your car running to warm up.

[Carruthers]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

That mini Tesco sounds like what we call convenience stores, WAWA is the local biggie. Park right at the door, grab something you need, pay a premium for the convenience, and on your way. These have become the regular morning on the way to work stop for millions. Coffee, maybe a pack of smokes or a pastry. Sometimes something for lunch if you know you'll be busy at lunch time. When the market has bananas for 49 cents a lb, the WAWA will charge 70 cents for one banana, but in winter you can leave your car running to warm up.

Yep, they're convenience stores this side of the Atlantic also.
At one time they tended to be sole traders who grouped together to take advantage of the discounts available to bulk purchasers.
Others were franchise operations and were sometimes described as 'little gold mines'.
The big supermarket chains saw the opportunity to make even more money by opening their own convenience stores.
The rationale was that people would buy all the things they had run out of in between their weekly shopping trips.
Accordingly, they are often referred to in the retail trade as 'sod it' shops, as in 'sod it, we've run out of milk' although the 'on the way to work stop' that you describe no doubt generates considerable profit.

It's interesting that you mention the push to sell strawberries etc. The 'buy one, get one free' (BOGOF) model is well known here as well.
Of course what is meant by that is that each pack is half price. Sometimes you will see single packs of strawberries or raspberries being sold at supposedly 'half price'.
As far as I can tell, no-one has ever bought supermarket strawberries at full price!
Quite how they get around the various regulations to promote goods in this way is something of a mystery.

Dad gets 'Which?' magazine which is published by the Consumers' Association and I have a feeling there is an article in a recent edition exposing some of these marketing practices.
I'll dig that out and see what else they've been up to that I haven't spotted.
To the best of my recollection, I believe that there's an official enquiry going on into supermarket pricing policies.
No doubt it will take years to produce a result and although much of the sharp practice will be weeded out, the supermarkets will come up with a dazzling new array of ploys equally as sneaky as the last lot.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Yes, the on the way to work is huge because we're drivers, if there was more mass transit, these stores would take hit. The WAWA stores sell gasoline too, any store they can't add gas pumps to is closed an a brand new one with pumps is built. The smallest I've see around me is 28 pumps. For 647 stores in 6 states, 194,000,000 cups of coffee is lucrative.