[TheReveller]

This is similar to the reason that household brands have such terrible packaging design. It's a form of price differentiation - if you can afford the more expensive version you'll avoid the ugly one just because it doesn't look nice.

[feintruled]

I've always been amused by Sainsbury's tactics - as well as the bland and unattractive packaging for their value brands, they also add a little passive-aggressive slogan that slightly throws some shade on their own product (and perhaps by association, you). For example, value wipes have "Not quite as thick, but cleans up quick". Value peas have something like "A little smaller, but just as tasty!"

https://thetab.com/uk/cambridge/2015/06/08/apologetic-sainsb...

Emphasising "less" and "small". I guess the slogan they really want is "You are too poor to afford the good stuff".

(Of course the joke is all the products are indistinguishable out of the packet as no doubt they come from the same production lines and they aren't likely to tool up to make deliberately inferior versions if that would cost extra).

[jdietrich]

>Of course the joke is all the products are indistinguishable out of the packet as no doubt they come from the same production lines and they aren't likely to tool up to make deliberately inferior versions if that would cost extra

That's absolutely not the case. It's definitely economical to make slightly inferior versions for the value brand. If you read the ingredients, you can see where they've cut costs. For example, the ordinary own-brand chocolate digestives are 27% chocolate, while the Basics brand digestives are 24% chocolate.

Basics pasta is made from an inferior grade of wheat, Basics peanut butter is bulked out with 8% vegetable oil, Basics tin foil is very slightly thinner. It seems like a trivial difference, but it equates to millions of pounds a year across the entire product range. The major supermarkets and their manufacturing partners are incredibly good at finding marginal cost savings.

Supermarkets really want you to buy their own-brand products, because the margins are far better than on branded goods. I believe that the slogans used by Sainsburys are playing on quite a subtle psychological effect - by signposting how they saved money, they reduce the sense that the product is suspiciously cheap.

Low-cost airlines like Ryanair have deliberately cultivated an image of conspicuous thrift. We intuitively interpret the second-tier airports with crappy facilities, the tatty seat upholstery and the ugly websites as signals of trustworthiness, because we can see where the corners have been cut to save money. In some sense, we want to get shafted on baggage fees or sold a scratchcard by a surly flight attendant, because it allays our fears that they have scrimped on engine maintenance or hired a load of ex-Aeroflot pilots.

https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/shop/gb/groceries/chocolate-bis...

https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/shop/gb/groceries/sainsburys-mi...

[feintruled]

Very informative post, I consider myself roundly corrected!