Not all supermarkets can be the cheapest: Consumentenbond

Nine Dutch supermarket chains, including Aldi, Albert Heijn and Jumbo, have stopped telling prospective customers they are the cheapest in the country, consumer organisation Consumentenbond said on Wednesday.

There is never one supermarket that is the cheapest across the board, the Consumentenbond said.

The watchdog carried out frequent comparisons between supermarkets based on a shopping basket filled with A label products, own brands and basic products and found that some products are invariably cheaper at different supermarkets.

“But if nine different supermarkets claim they are the cheapest, they are selling nonsense,” the Consumentenbond said. “Price guarantees cannot all be correct at the same time. Supermarkets sell 20,000 products on average. It is impossible to maintain that all these products are always being sold at the lowest price.”

The claims are misleading but they work, Dirk Mulder, ING retail expert told Nu.nl. “Dutch people are very easily led. We see a sign saying ‘discount offer’ and in we go. It’s different in Germany. Prices there are structurally lower,” he said.

“Offers are a means to lure people in. They contribute to the image of a supermarket as value for money. If Albert Heijn or Jumbo continually advertise with offers of bonus products, they create the impression that they are lowering prices all the time,” he said.

According to retail researcher Joeri van Rens, supermarkets would do well to structurally lower prices instead of touting offers. “In the long term, that works just as well,” he said.

Shoppers who do not want to be taken in by offers do well to look at the liter or kilo prices, Mulder said. “Not all offers are necessarily the cheapest buy. Also compare A-brands to own brands,” he said.

All nine supermarkets have now agreed not to say they are the cheapest, the Consumentenbond said, except Vomar.