News: Credit crunch is killing BOGOF, say researchers

The credit crunch is killing off “buy one get one free” offers in favour of simple price discounting, according to retail research company Assosia.

Its analysis of promotions in the first four months of this year claims that cash-strapped consumers want to make financial savings rather than buying more products than they need.

Assosia’s data reveals that last year more than a third of deals – 36 per cent – offered by the UK’s biggest supermarket chain, Tesco, were BOGOFs. But in the first four months of this year that fell to 12 per cent, while the ratio of “save” deals doubled to 46 per cent.

Morrisons also doubled its number of simple money-off deals while BOGOFs were down from 35 per cent to 31 per cent. Somerfield more than tripled its ratio of half-price deals while reducing BOGOFs.

Assosia marketing director Kay Staniland said: “There has been a big dip and it is down to shoppers wanting an overall saving. They would rather spend 50p to get one product than a pound to get two. They no longer value bulk savings.”

Earlier this year, BOGOFs and similar price promotions using the word “free” were feared to be under threat because of the European Unfair Commercial Practices Directive being transposed into UK law this month.

However, while words meaning “free” have been banned in other European countries, the UK Government is not forcing retailers and promoters to do the same.