Consumer Grocery | The co-op lures with a price cap: - You don't have to believe this kind of thing

(The newspaper online): Department store chain Coop Extra launches a “price cap” on more than 100 popular everyday items.

The campaign is a promise of no pricing. But only for a month and a half, since the campaign ended on October 2nd.

In the list of what the chain refers to as everyday commodities, we find more than milk and bread. There are also socks in six different sizes, a pair of scissors and a drain opener.

The latest add-on with a price cap went out at the beginning of July – on just over 100 summer items. The price cap is now extended to 100 “popular” items per day.

Marketing experts and the consumer market are highly critical of marketing for not having markup as an offering.

Set up a price cap in July

A price ceiling means the price of the goods can go down, but not during the period, Coop Extra asserts.

Food prices rose more than the average price increase, reaching 9.2 percent from July 2022 to July 2023SSB can provide last week’s report.

– The majority of customers, who are also our owners, tell us that they experience the price cap as a positive measure. In the period when school and studies start, it is very important to have the security so that everyday goods are bought as cheap as possible, says Daniel Kerry Pedersen, chain manager at Extra.

However, it wasn’t that long ago that additional price guarantees were set up:

– Most of the commodities included in the price ceiling received an increase in prices due to the increase in prices of suppliers in July. Communications consultant Knut Lutniz says some did not get variable rates.

But a price guarantee doesn’t give discount prices – it just promises not to raise existing prices.

– We’ve used our customers’ insight to identify over 100 common everyday items within different categories. The list includes products unique to Coop and Extra stores and brands from our suppliers, Pedersen says.

Some of the products covered by the Extra price cap:

green grapes
Crispy salad
Supercool cup
Original Norvegia 1 kilo
Stapor mackerel 170 grams
Natural yoghurt 1 kilo
Q Milk Light 1.0% 1 liter
Cup Breakfast Eggs 6-pack and 12-pack
Grill Perfect Salmon Fillet Cup
Gild meat balls 800 grams

– Really strange

Olaf Kasland, Professional Director at Consumer Council, is not impressed with the campaign from Coop:

– It looks like a marketing ploy. You don’t know if it’s real or not, and it won’t be long until October 2nd. Maybe they should raise prices then?

Casland had not heard of the campaign before he contacted Netavisen. We inform you that the selection of “Everyday Goods” includes drain openers and shears:

– I don’t buy scissors for everyday use. So it’s a little ironic, that is.

Bad publicity

There’s been a lot of negative publicity for a long time, but it’s worth it, says Trond Blindheim, a lecturer in the Department of Marketing at University College Christiania. Now is the time to find something positive, he believes:

—but here they communicate more with themselves than with the audience, for this has no effect whatsoever, other than that it will be viewed negatively. Very bad advertisement. They’re actually saying they’re going to raise prices in six weeks, Blindheim says.

As a consumer, only one thing applies, says Consumer Council Specialist Casland Director. Compares price cap campaigns to price guarantees in the electricity market. There, you’re guaranteed to be in the middle if the price is higher than the competition’s—that’s a real price guarantee, Kasland points out.

– You shouldn’t believe all these marketing gimmicks. The only thing that applies is to check prices against competitors who apply. In this case, we don’t even know if these are the cheapest prices. They just guarantee against themselves. It’s very strange.

– We do not deceive anyone

Coop has no interest in deceiving customers with “marketing gimmicks,” says Knut Lutnæs at Coop.

He says price ceilings in the grocery market are common and used in many other countries, as well as by other Norwegian players. Lutnæs believes that a price cap gives consumers real security at a time when many prices are being adjusted.

– The price cap that is being launched now includes different types of goods for daily use. The prices of these commodities followed the price developments in the market before the price ceiling. The price cap carries over from the price cap we had on summer goods, for which we received good feedback from customers. What happened after October 2, says Knut Lutniz, we obviously cannot answer for reasons of competition.