Food/Groceries

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Wal-mart Saves on Groceries, But You Call This Proof?

Over the past six months or so, Wal-mart has been advertising that families who spend a $100 a week on groceries could save $165 in three months if they shop at Wal-mart.

Now, there are two new versions of the ad that apparently started running nationally around February 16, 2010, making the claim “People who spent $100 a week at leading national supermarkets on frequently purchased groceries, could have saved $55 in one month by shopping at Wal-mart instead.”

*MOUSE PRINT:

Look at their disclaimer above.  Do you think there might be something a little fishy about the proof they offered for how they arrived at that claim?  Putting aside the issue that they don’t count meat, produce, and other weighed-to-order items which can be a substantial portion of one’s grocery bill, and that there really is no such thing as a “national supermarket” with locations in all states, look at when their survey was conducted.  It is for an almost six week period beginning January 31 and ending March 12, 2010. Check your calendar because it still is not March 12 yet!  So how does Wal-mart know the results of its price comparison a month before the comparison is over, and how can an as yet uncompleted survey be used to substantiate an advertising claim?

That question was posed to Wal-mart’s PR folks, who were invited to comment for this story twice.  No response was received. And the commercial is still running (it was on during 60 Minutes last night) despite Wal-mart being made aware of the problem one week ago.

It is also curious that the savings claimed last summer in a similar series of commercials — $165 for three months — works out to exactly $55 a month.  That is the very amount they are claiming to be the current monthly savings.  Have not grocery prices changed even a penny in six months?

Last June, the National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau ruled in a case about Wal-mart’s previously advertised grocery savings claims (similar to this commercial):

“NAD further determined that the claim ‘if you bought these kinds of groceries at Wal-Mart, you could save on average over $700 a year’ was not supported by the evidence in the record and therefore recommended that it be discontinued.”

So the “$55″ ad above is the new and improved version of the commercial?

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Tide: Why You Get Fewer Loads than Promised

Detergents are sold in bottles that note the number of ounces inside as well as the number of loads of wash the bottle will do.  It turns out that manufacturers have a few tricks up their sleeve to virtually ensure that you don’t get the number of loads the bottles promise.

Trick #1: In the case of 100 ounce Tide, the front of the bottle indicates that you get 64 uses from this product.

 *MOUSE PRINT:

The 64 uses is based on a “medium load”, that is only filling the cap up to line 1, which is roughly one-third full:

Most consumers have big capacity washers and probably don’t do “medium loads” as their normal load, and thus will never get the claimed number of washes for the typical-size loads. Large loads require filling the cap to line 2, and who knows what line 3 is for. Filling the cap to line 2 will only yield approximately 50 uses, rather than 64. Interestingly, line three is the only line that goes completely around the entire inside of the cap, so it is the most visible from any angle, and possibly the one that most people might use.

Trick #2: Related to this, the cap is larger than any load size, so unthinking users who may have been used to products that required you to use a capful of product, will really deplete the bottle quickly. In fact, you will get fewer than 25 loads from the 64 load bottle if you do so. Think this is an accident?

“Take a cap and look at where the lines are—nowhere near the top,” says Adam Lowry, co-founder of San Francisco-based Method. “That’s not accidental. In an extremely mature market like laundry, for established players to grow they have to either steal share or get people to use more,” Mr. Lowry says. “They are trying to dupe people into using more product than they need.” — Wall Street Journal, January 25, 2010

P&G of course denies that its caps are designed to trick users.

Trick #3: Tide defines “load” differently depending on what they are trying to accomplish. Sample packages of Tide Ultra when it first came out were marked “1 Load” and probably did a good job on the average person’s large washload. Large washload? Yes, the amount of detergent in the packet was enough to almost fill their cap to line 2 (see picture below) — for large washloads. So P&G seems to say that one load should be enough to do a large wash when they are trying to impress their customers with a free sample, but they are not putting the equivalent amount of detergent per load in the bottles they sell.

According to the Wall Street Journal, P&G is about to introduce new caps on their various brands of liquid detergent, to make the markings clearer.

For now, just don’t expect to get the promised number of loads if you do normal-sized washes.

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Trader Joe’s (Not) “Simply Almonds, Cashews & Cranberries”

You cannot judge a book by its cover, and you cannot judge a granola by its name. That’s the lesson one learns when looking at a box of Trader Joe’s Trek Mix Granola called “Simply Almonds, Cashews & Cranberries.”

traderjoegranola1

Based on the product’s name, one would think this was more of a trail mix, containing only almonds, cashews and cranberries. Yum.

*MOUSE PRINT:

traderjoegranola2

It really has more oats and sugar than any other ingredient, as well as flour and oil. The key ingredients — almonds, cashews, and cranberries — are not even in the order of predominance suggested by the product’s name. In fact, they are in the opposite order, with more cranberries present than almonds.

Just as those old Freezer Queen two pound frozen entries used to be named “Gravy and Turkey” because there was more gravy than turkey in product, Trader Joe’s should simply rename their product more accurately.

Thanks to Willie L. for this submission.