I can understand the frustration with consumers settling for less. I was one of the commenters who did not mind the Staples advertisement from last week because the web page with the merchandise on it clearly said that the $8 price was after purchasing $50 worth of goods. At the MINIMUM I expect to be told what the actual price of an item is before I put it in my shopping cart and Staples did that. I am not familiar with how merchandising and advertising laws vary by state so I cannot speak to that.

I don't think consumer advocates have done a bad job of informing the public at all. The problem is that the public is either apathetic or satisfied with most market conditions. The incentive for vendors to change is not there. A lot of consumers like the idea of shopping being a "game". I remember when JC Penny changed their pricing to reduce the fake sales and marketing gimmicks. Consumers came up with every kind of excuse to say that JC Penny was a terrible store after that, but in reality JC Penny didn't change much of its actual merchandise. Consumers just weren't happy that they didn't see a lot of stuff with "25% off" tags on them. They didn't care that the 25% off came after a 25% markup in price. And don't get me started on unit pricing at grocery stores. There has already been a lot of coverage on that in this blog.

At the end of the day it is impractical for all advertisements to contain all the information necessary. Sometimes consumers will have to look up more information. The Staples ad should have come with a warning about conditional pricing, I agree, but at the most the Staples ad probably would have changed to "$8 after special savings offer". Still not very clear.