The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has called on grocery retailers to tighten up their approach to pricing after finding that some stores are failing to display clear and accurate prices.
Following a separate investigation into unit pricing last year, the regulator looked at the price-marking practices of 139 grocery stores in England and Wales, including supermarkets, symbol convenience stores, variety stores and independent food shops.
On-site inspections examined a sample of products, such as fresh fruit and vegetables, and products on promotion. The CMA found that some stores were displaying inaccurate prices or failed to display prices at all for certain products. Failing to provide clear and accurate pricing information for products on sale is a breach of consumer law.
The regulator’s findings concur with similar work carried out by some regional and local Trading Standards (TS) across England and Wales, and previous findings by the Society of Chief Officers of Trading Standards in Scotland (SCOTSS) and Northern Ireland Trading Standards (TSNI).
The CMA noted that the majority of issues were found at independent food stores and symbol convenience stores. The most common types of issues were missing prices, conflicting prices (instances where prices indicated on products conflicted with those shown on shelf edge labels), and prices not being displayed sufficiently close to products.
There were also problems with prices not being clearly legible, the selling price being obscured, and multi-buy promotion labels that didn’t specify the price of the items individually.
The percentage of pricing errors found at each type of store was 4.2% at supermarkets, 14.4% at symbol convenience stores, 5.6% at variety stores, and 7.8% at independent food stores. Overall, the report shows that 60% of the errors resulted in a higher price being charged at the till.
To help grocery retailers understand what they need to do to comply with the law, the CMA, in conjunction with Trading Standards, has published compliance materials. The regulator is also calling on the relevant trade associations to share these compliance materials with their members.
“We know how frustrating it can be when you get to the till only to find the price doesn’t match what was advertised,” said George Lusty, Interim Executive Director for Consumer Protection and Markets at the CMA.
“While lots of grocery retailers – particularly supermarkets – are complying with pricing rules, this needs to consistently be the case across all types of stores. It’s important that shoppers can make well-informed choices based on accurate information, especially at a time when lots of people are looking to save money. That’s why we are reminding businesses of the importance of complying with consumer law.”
NAM Implications:
- In the scheme of things i.e. the realities of the marketplace…
- …with inventories of 30,000+ and equivalent traffic…..
- …supermarkets are not trying to deceive (i.e. human error is causing some price discrepancies).
- The key is the need to facilitate true like-with-like price comparisons.
- In which case, all stakeholders should focus on developing a robust and universal unit pricing system.
