So, a common supermarket sales pitch is the classic “buy one get one free” deal. Is it really necessary to purchase two items in order to get the discount? Or can you just buy one for 50% off? And if you can or can’t, then is it the same way for every supermarket or are they all different?
Would especially appreciate input from people in the supermarket or bulk retail sector.
If they say “Buy one, get one free” then that’s what they mean. As half-items aren’t offered for sale, you can’t buy a half and get the other half free. The idea is to shift more units.
Supermarkets also offer deals like 2 for $2. One place would charge me more than $1 when I bought only 1. I stopped going there pretty quickly because there are other places that don’t pull that crap.
On the other hand, if they had said, “normally $10, but today 2 for $10” you are allowed to buy one for $5.
ETA: Just updating to say that I have not experienced what Malacandra notes.
The grocery store I shop at pretty consistently simply divides the offer price by the number of units in the offer. In other words, if I see tuna “4 for $5,” when I start ringing them up, they ring at $1.25 right from the first one, so even if I bought 3, the rate would be the same.
Sometimes, however, I notice that with other offers, say its avocados “2 for $1,” when I ring up the first one, it will ring at $0.69, then when I ring up the next one, it rings at $0.69, but then a discount applies of $0.38.
Personally, I suspect it depends on where the incentive for the discount is coming from. Like if they’re overstocked vs. the vendor cut them a special and they’re passing it along.
It depends on the store. Some give a discount on no matter how many items you buy, some on what the sign specifically says. I’ve seen it both ways, but in every instance where it says “buy one, get one free”, you had to buy 2 items (at least).
Yeah it depends on the store. You have to read the tag completely to determine what exactly that means.
You could try possibly gaming the system by buying one, getting one free, then returning one of them, but I think most people would deem that unethical at best.
Damn! I was certain that the “x for $y” that I referenced earlier was a truth in advertising law, but I cannot find a specific cite. What I have found is that the regulations regarding how a supermarket or other retailer can price goods and advertise those prices vary by state. It is not necessarily up to the store.
The “x for $y” example is commonly referenced in Psychology (and Marketing) classes to demonstrate how consumers can be lead to a purchasing decision. The whole point of the example is that although they can purchase a smaller quantity, they will most likely purchase “x” number, as that is what the advertisement indicates that they should do.
At Harris Teeter whenever something is advertised as “buy one, get one free” they actually charge half price; it even says so in the ads: “Item rings at half price with your VIC card”. Also, whenever items are listed at say, 10/$5, each item rings up at fifty cents, regardless of the number I buy. Occasionally they will have “buy 2 get 3 free” sales, where you have have to buy five to get the full value of the sale.
In this age of computers, if a store charges 1/2 price each when the sale is “buy one, get one free”, why can’t they charge 2/5 price each when it’s “buy 2 get 3 free”? It’s the same store, right? They have calculators and computers, right? It’s the same verbiage on each sign, right? Seems very weird that a store would do what you describe – not that I doubt you, it just seems weird.
It’s not a matter of the store being able to do the math, it’s a matter of how the store wants to sell the items and the reasoning behind the sales. In some cases they are not interested in giving a discount if you buy one item - they want you to take three off their hands.
FWIW, Harris Teeter is the store from my “sometimes it’s one way, sometimes the other” post above.
In my experience here in Charleston, all the stores I shop at (H-T, Publix, Bi-Lo, the Pig, and Food Lion), “buy one get one free” means that each item will ring up half price. H-T says so in their ads, but some of the others say so, too. H-T will sometimes run “buy 2, get 3 free.” These, as far as I can recall, are on soup cans, especially Progresso. In fact, H-T had one last week. I believe the reason for that is because soup cans are slow movers, and they want to get rid of them. They may have “sell by” dates that are fast approaching. “Buy 2, get 3 free” means you have to buy at least two. I usually stock up on those soup cans since they are not perishable. If you don’t know if that’s the policy of the store you shop at, you have two choices: ask a nearby clerk to scan for the price (Bi-Lo has scanners throughout the store) or ask the cashier.
I shop at all those stores because I always check the Wednesday paper (that’s the starting date for the week’s sales) for the “buy one, get one free” deals. I usually buy at least two, but sometimes more. However, I always buy just one loaf of bread. Two loaves is more than I can use in a week, which is the longest the bread is good for.
I do understand that, but I feel that I, the consumer, should be able to predict how much my purchase is going to cost. If one sign that says “buy x, get y free” really means “buy any amount at x/(x+y) price”, then that should carry over to any values of x and y for all signs in the same store. Simple solution? Just say 1/2 off if that’s what you mean, and save the buy two get three free signs for when you really mean it.
I did catch that the buy 1 get 1 free signs say “items ring at half price”, so that’s ok unless it’s in super fine print or something.
Another anecdote for, “it depends”. Often, the tag will have the information you seek, if it’s a grocery store. Watch the fine print, especially…I’ve seen “2 for $4 1 for $2.50” sorts of tags before.
In my experience (Fry’s/Kroger), they’ve got a few different wordings that let you predict the requirements:
Buy X, get Y free: You must buy X at full price to get Y free. If you only buy one item when the offer is B2G1 or something, you’ll be charged full price for the one rather than 1/3 the price.
Buy X, get $Y off: Similar to BXGY. If you buy less than X you don’t get any of the discount.
X/$Y: Each item costs $Y/X, no matter how many you buy. 10/$10 = each is $1.
Thankfully the last offer is by far their most common.
Maybe this is just a California thing, but the tag always tells you which kind of deal it is for each item, and also lists the unit price each way. For example, if it’s “two 2-liter bottles cost $2, but one costs $1.50”, they tell you that, and also list a unit price of $0.50/L for two, $0.75/L for one. If it’s “two 2-liter bottles cost $2, and one costs $1”, there will only be one unit price. They also have the non-sale unit price on a separate tag, so you can see what kind of a deal you’re getting.
The one that always baffled me was the “buy 3, get 2 free–maximum purchase of 5 per customer” that I often see on 12-packs of Coke products. I can understand “buy 3, get 2 free” because they want me to buy more. I can understand “maximum purchase of 5” because they don’t want me stocking up for the next 6 months. But why both at the same time? How is that to their advantage?
I used to work in the large-scale supermarket industry in systems including corporate Point of Sale control systems and most of the answers given are correct. Modern Point of Sale software can generally do whatever you tell it to so the deals can be set up however the merchandiser (the corporate buyer) and the vendor want it to be. It is usually marketing driven and contrary to popular belief, supermarket chains really hate to screw customers in any way because people have to buy groceries and word of mouth is a powerful thing both for or against the stores so it pays to be fairly clear and honest. There is usually a goal like clearing backlog of a certain product that would be the reason that a given ad is written the way it is to influence consumer behavior without being devious.
There is also state law involved and the bitchy little old ladies are your consumer ally on that one. They are generally the ones to make the harassing calls to corporate headquarters when a deal doesn’t seem fair and they are sometimes corrected on the fly mid-sale due to those calls. No joke, we found a team of the nastiest, most nitpicky customers (always retired people) and gave them freelance work and incentives for shopping and finding flaws in sales. They usually got a cash incentive or free products for the mistakes or truly misleading things they found and that was more than enough to keep them going. That program was pure management genius.
I was shocked to go to a Publix in Florida (we use Publix here in South Carolina all the time) and find out that I did in fact have to buy one to get one free. Seriously, I was about to get all offended but they explained it was state law. Here, you can buy one and get the sale price every time.
Yeah, I’ve noticed that at Safeway and the like, the special deal always shows up on the register in a clear, easy-to-understand way (so it’s obvious I’m not getting ripped off), even if the cashier knows nothing about the deal. A few times, I’ve heard things like, “I didn’t know we had that sale, I’ll have to remember to get some on the way home.”
On the other hand, at Walgreen’s, every time I buy a 2/$5 deal, it shows up as $10 or something else ridiculous, and they have to get half the employees in the store hovering around the register and running around looking at the tags before they finally enter it manually with supervisor override. Are there separate companies dealing with drug-stores-with-a-bit-of-groceries, or is Walgreen’s just completely inept?