In general, grocery retailers clear just a few percentage points on everything, not just Tide. Sure, some things can get marked up more, but the storewide profit (as a percent of sales) is generally a couple percent. [Don’t feel bad for the grocers, remember they sell their entire inventory ten times a year]
Yes, Tide (and other detergents) is one of the higher-profit items in a grocery store.
In fact, anything you can’t eat that is sold in a grocery store is likely to be high-priced compared to other stores. Like the knives & baking dishes etc. sold in one aisle of the store. And the seasonal items, like Xmas cards or decorations, or Halloween costumes, or similar items that the grocery store sells only for a short time before the holiday. (But the leftover ones On Sale! right after the holiday can be real bargain.)
Grocery stores are very competitive, and absolutely must price food very close to their competitors. They depend on repeat business (thus the emphasis on rewards cards for frequent shoppers) and the weekly specials to get customers int the store. But non-food items are bought less frequently, and people do less comparison shopping, so the store can price them with a slightly higher profit margin. And the other grocery stores do the same.
I didn’t mean it quite like that - only that the differences are exaggerated by the rankings as much as they are presented meaningfully. Barring the occasional misfire, most people would be unable to tell the lower-ranked products (in these commodity areas) from the top ones in daily use.
I know that we’ve used store-brand/second-tier brand unscented laundry soap for decades without any problems, and that’s through kids, dogs, messy hobbies and my sometimes untidy cooking methods. 
Quoted for emphasis. The poor depend on food stamps to feed their families, but can’t use them for some of their other basic needs. This creates a demand, and some will be willing to steal to fill it. The food stamp recipient either buys the soap at a reduced price, or barters food for it. The thief faces the same risk if they steal the cheapest house brand soap, or the most expensive name brand they might be able to get a better return on…so they steal the most expensive brand, and care nothing if it works better or not.
This is real enough that my church collects soap and other toilet items to distribute to the poor.
I work for a large discount retail chain, I can confirm that some of our highest shrink (i.e. theft) occurs with the following products:
- men’s underwear and socks
- health & beauty products (soap, dental hygiene, deodorant, and cosmetics)
- bleach
- laundry detergent
My conclusion is that most shoplifters are very clean and change their socks and underwear frequently.
Here’s a non-Maryland cite that detergent has been shoplifted. However, it’s from April 2012 so I wouldn’t exactly call it something new.
As someone who has worked in a detergent manufacturing plant (not one licensed by Tide), I have to disagree. Tide is more expensive for two reasons: it’s slightly more concentrated than other name brands (and much more concentrated than watered-down generics), and it tends to be closer to pH neutral than other brands.
Neither of these advantages are taken into consideration by CR due to their (in my opinion extremely faulty) method, which only compares how well the detergents tested clean the average load of laundry. Much, much more important is how harsh the detergent is on clothing; using cheaper detergent will knock months, even years off the expected life of fabric, especially cottons. Saving $1 by buying El Cheapo isn’t worth having to replace $100 worth of underwear twice as often - and yes, that’s what it comes down to.
What you have to watch for with Tide is that the cap on the bottle is far larger than the amount recommended for even a large load of very dirty laundry. People who fail to read the product label end up using a full cap, which is far more than the manufacturer recommends, but even then it’s possible to use less. I use less than 1/4 capful for a large load of laundry, and it always gets clean. (This is to an extent true of all higher quality brands, but generics? Often watered down, with cheap thickener added to disguise the dilution.)
Best brand there is for money laundering.
The National Retail Federation did add detergent to its list of most stolen items (.pdf). Joseph LaRocca is an NRF and RetailPartners staffer. However, there is no mention of the Tide brand anywhere in the report (contrast KitchenAid, which is mentioned by name).
Yea I was going to add that a whole lot of people overuse detergent to an astounding degree, if there is 12 inches of foam on top of the water you used WAY too much.
Here’s a handy YouTube video from April of last year, from those crazy youngsters at SourceFed. Slightly factual, mostly funny.
In my own laundry career, I’ve never really noticed a difference among brands, so I shop by price.
I do like those new pod thingies. Easier on sore wrists than a box or jug. Still, I can do a lot better for price-per-load buying the Costco version, which gets my clothes just as clean as the Tide pods.
I guess the underlying question here is, why can’t you buy detergent, toilet paper, or toothpaste with food-stamp payments?
Because it’s a program to provide food.
And it’s funded through the Department of Agriculture. Many of the votes to keep it going come from Republicans in rural states, who would normally be against any government grants to poor people, except that this program is very important to farmers, who make up a large part of their voters. It’s sometimes said that Food Stamps (SNAP) is more of a farm subsidy than an aid to poor families.
How does having a pH closer to neutral cost more?
Because the food stamp program was designed to help eliminate surplus food stocks, rather than just to feed people. Now, it’s because SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits are administered by the Department of Agriculture, and helping people wipe their bottoms is beyond its remit.
ETA: ninja’d.
Tide comes in, Tide goes out.
Can’t explain that!