Retail

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“Up to” Savings Claims Mislead Many

Advertisers are very fond of promoting the best case scenario in advertisements, such as sale ads that say “Save up to 50% on sofas” or “Sofas as low as $199”.

The careful reader will or should recognize this trick that not all sofas are discounted 50% or priced at $199. But what about the average person who is exposed to advertising? Do they only recall the 50% savings claim rather than the “up to” part of the claim?

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wanted to know, so they commissioned a study to out. Over 350 people were shown one of the three ads below, and asked about what they recalled.

The first ad makes an “up to 47%” savings claim. The second makes a straight 47% claim. And the third makes an “up to 47%” savings but with a fine print disclosure that the average savings are 25%.

*MOUSE PRINT:

When asked what the ad said about how much you would save on heating and cooling bills with these windows,

Ad 1 (with “up to” claim): 46% said they would save “47%” and only 26% said “up to” 47%

Ad 2: 58% said they would save “47%”

Ad 3 (with “up to” claim and disclaimer): 37% said they would save 47% and 30% said “up to” 47%

The study suggests that many consumers are blind to fine print disclosures, and that the use of “up to” claims misleads sizeable numbers of consumers. This certainly appears to support the notion that sellers should not be allowed to use either “up to” claims nor to put clarifications in fine print footnotes.

Massachusetts law, for example, does not allow “up to” claims in advertising. The ad must state both the smallest discount and largest discount in equal size type (such as “save 10 – 50%”), and at least 10-percent of the items being offered for sale must be available at the biggest discount offered.

Not a bad model to follow in the other 49 states.

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Quiznos: Where’s the Lobster?

A TV commercial from Quiznos caught MrConsumer’s attention a couple of weeks ago. They were promoting a lobster sandwich, but the lobster looked funny. The pieces were uniform in shape, and looked more like tater tots than lobster pieces.

A second viewing of the commercial and freezing it explained all.

*MOUSE PRINT:

lobster sandwich

There is only 51% lobster in the fish portion of the sandwich. But to their credit, they did not call it “lobster sandwich” but lobster and seafood sandwich. And the only way that “lobster” could come first in the name is if the sandwich had (slightly) more lobster than “seafood”.

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Here We Downsize Again – Part 1 (2012)

In the never ending cycle of products periodically shrinking inconspicuously in size rather than directly going up in price, we found some doozies.

Paper towels often are downsized, and Bounty is no exception:

*MOUSE PRINT:

Bounty Select-a-Size went from 121 sheets on a roll down to 111. But, the new package seems to say that you are getting 33% more sheets. How in the world is that possible?

*MOUSE PRINT:

The fine print says the comparison is not with the prior version of this product as you would expect, but rather with a “regular” roll, whatever that size really is. If you think about, it is outrageous that P&G would put a 33% more sheets claim on a package that was actually just downsized in the number of sheets.

Last fall, peanut butter prices went through the roof. What got less publicity was the fact that nuts themselves went up in price too. In the case of Planters nuts, consumers experienced both a direct price increase as well as a downsizing.

*MOUSE PRINT:

As always, manufacturers never call your attention to the fact that they have downsized the product, so you have to become net-weight-conscious in order to catch them playing this sneaky game.