I don’t do much with business ethics, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that there is something wrong with Colgate.
I snapped these two pictures at the grocery store over a month ago because I thought it was kind of funny. Compare them.
Single Purchase
Value Pack Purchase
Did you figure it out? A single tube of Colgate was $2.99, but if you bought two tubes packaged together in their value pack it cost $6.54. So, it costs you $0.56 more to buy two tubes together in their value pack.
That could have been a mistake, but it smacks of deceptive marketing. It certainly seems that a company could package things this way in hopes that people would simply assume that the value pack is cheaper without bothering to look carefully at the price difference. I should note that the Value pack was right next to the single tube pack.
I wasn’t really planning on posting the pictures or anything, but then the diggers rocketed this blog post to the front page. The post describes a different deceptive packaging move from Colgate.
The photo tells the story, but the post is worth reading. Here’s the photo.
That seemed like an odd enough of a coincidence to be worthy of a post.
Some Possible Responses on Behalf of Colgate…
Consumer’s Fault
Some are inclined to dismiss this and say that it’s the consumer’s responsibility to understand what they’re getting. (That seems to be popular in the Digg comments).
However, you can agree that the consumer is responsible to read everything carefully, and consistently maintain that Colgate should not be misleading. Perhaps the consumer should not be so irritated if they didn’t look carefully, but that doesn’t excuse Colgate. The mere fact that the prices and sizes are listed somewhere does not entail there hasn’t been deception.
Negligible Harm
Another response is that we’re dealing with such negligible harms here. We’re talking about 50 cents in one case and 4oz. of toothpaste in the other.
Whether you’re a deontologist or a consequentialist you’ve got something to say here. If you’re a deontologist, pointing out that the harm is negligible is insufficient to show that this isn’t wrong. If you have more consequentialist leanings, I’m sure we could think of possible future harms that are significant if this kind of deception is permitted and ignored.
Grocery Store Markup
This is an updated potential response. Justin Webb in the comments points out that in the case of the pricing it’s possible the pricing deception entered in at the grocery store markup and not from Colgate.
This, of course, doesn’t mean there wasn’t deception. It would just shift who is to blame from Colgate to the grocery store.
Update:
This one is not specifically Colgate, but a Walmart sham of a similar sort. Here’s the photo.
Hey Andy, I’m just curious as to whether or not those were those found at Quality? Because it’s been my experience that the business chain that owns Quality (out east here in CNY it’s P&C market) always has either prices that are a tad (loosely-used) pricey or deceptive deals.
I don’t know much about the way the price is figured out; I always assumed that the individual stores chose the price based on how much they bought the product for, for profit-sake. If this is the case, then it might not be Colgate so much as the market chain.
(Of course, this has nothing to do with the tube size. That seems like an obvious rip-off.)
What do you think?
They were from Tops, and that’s a good point about the store markup issue.
It’s certainly possible that the markup came from the grocery store and not directly from Colgate.
Andy,
The Consumerist has run photographs that I’ve taken from time to time. It doesn’t really have anything to do with this post, but it is a point of pride.
Also, KFC has been advertising 20 wings of some variety or another for 10 bucks…or, you can get six for 3. What a bargain, huh?
This happens all the time at our K-mart with their sales ads! they will show an item Soap, shampoo, aftershave, deodorant and like items. They have a sale and the sale item COST MORE than their everyday price on the shelf! When I catch this I tell the manager and he gets PO pulls the shelf price and makes up excuses. When I push for a discount I get nothing but an attitude about prices change daily and crap. I will start taking and dating pictures to see if he puts the regular price back on hte shelf after the sale or not. thanks for the information!!