We used to buy specific cereals, then our local chain jacked up the prices 100% and started running “BOGO” Buy One Get One Free sales once every 3 months for a week - so: either pay 100% markup, or stock up during the BOGO when it hits… we quit shopping there. We do drop in a couple of times a year since then and last time I browsed the cereal aisle, not only are the prices higher than they were after the doubling, but the size of the boxes is down by 50% and more as well… good riddance.
That sounds like Publix behavior, though I am sure they are not alone. I have noticed that with essentially all grocery stores even after I moved across the country and have all different stores now, so it could be the manufacturers that are driving that sales flow. Either way, I get it. I just do the “stock up during sales” thing you were referring to because my wife and daughter were a bit starved for choices of “easy foods”.
Around here we have Publix, Winn Dixie, and further afield there’s Ingles which all seem virtually identical in their marketing / selection of products approaches. It’s been decades since I’ve been a Food Lion or Kroger’s but back then I remember they were a little more toned down - not as radical as Trader Joes or Aldi, but in that direction.
I don’t want to be forced into a particular store every single week to “grab the bargains when they’re avaialble” and otherwise pay doubleprice for most common items. So, I don’t shop those stores.
That sounds like where I used to live, so I figured the BOGO was Publix. I’m now in the midwest so no Food Lion or Kroger either, all store chains I had never heard of, but they do a lot of the same things.
It works, just like marketing nasty tasting bubbly acid sugar syrup using cute polar bears at christmastime worked in the 70s. It was “the real thing” and one of the most valuable companies on the planet, based on nothing but delivery of that nasty unhealthy stuff.
I think if you unpack the roots of the BOGO, it pushes a lot of the same reward buttons as nicotine delivery death sticks.
We used to buy specific cereals, then our local chain jacked up the prices 100% and started running “BOGO” Buy One Get One Free sales once every 3 months for a week - so: either pay 100% markup, or stock up during the BOGO when it hits… we quit shopping there. We do drop in a couple of times a year since then and last time I browsed the cereal aisle, not only are the prices higher than they were after the doubling, but the size of the boxes is down by 50% and more as well… good riddance.
That sounds like Publix behavior, though I am sure they are not alone. I have noticed that with essentially all grocery stores even after I moved across the country and have all different stores now, so it could be the manufacturers that are driving that sales flow. Either way, I get it. I just do the “stock up during sales” thing you were referring to because my wife and daughter were a bit starved for choices of “easy foods”.
Around here we have Publix, Winn Dixie, and further afield there’s Ingles which all seem virtually identical in their marketing / selection of products approaches. It’s been decades since I’ve been a Food Lion or Kroger’s but back then I remember they were a little more toned down - not as radical as Trader Joes or Aldi, but in that direction.
I don’t want to be forced into a particular store every single week to “grab the bargains when they’re avaialble” and otherwise pay doubleprice for most common items. So, I don’t shop those stores.
That sounds like where I used to live, so I figured the BOGO was Publix. I’m now in the midwest so no Food Lion or Kroger either, all store chains I had never heard of, but they do a lot of the same things.
It works, just like marketing nasty tasting bubbly acid sugar syrup using cute polar bears at christmastime worked in the 70s. It was “the real thing” and one of the most valuable companies on the planet, based on nothing but delivery of that nasty unhealthy stuff.
I think if you unpack the roots of the BOGO, it pushes a lot of the same reward buttons as nicotine delivery death sticks.