3 Comments
User's avatar
Mary Pat Campbell's avatar

The cry in my house (when I come back from the grocery store with N units of something I usually buy 1/week): It was on sale! (and yes, I know what the price I usually buy it for is)

I'm a price-sensitive shopper, and the grocery store pricers, when they want to clear inventory, are looking for people like me. Because I WILL clear out all those old cans of soup! I have a pantry!

Inventory has a cost, and I have no problem taking some of their crap off their hands. I have elasticity in some of my diet over the period that soup will keep good. But no, it's not going to tempt me to pick up a bunch of other stuff at higher prices that I do not need.

Expand full comment
Brendan Hodge's avatar

I hear you there.

My youngest two sons have a "favorite cereal" that I've never paid full price for. It's one of the new Cheerio variations, and a box is $4.98 at regular price, but I only buy it when it's 2.99 or below.

If they had some price discipline, I would never buy it -- never would have even tried it. But I imagine they have a lot of customers like that, so it's an overall portfolio play.

Expand full comment
Ashish Gupta's avatar

Can you include some example where price fencing has led to grey market and how companies deal with such scenario

Expand full comment