Purchasing products such as toilet rolls, cheese and laundry detergent pods in bigger packs might not always give shoppers the best deal, according to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).
In its latest investigation of grocery prices, the watchdog examined a basket of 26 items and found that “while it was usual for bigger packs to have a lower unit price than smaller packs, this wasn’t always true”, The Guardian reported.
The competition watchdog found examples where larger packs actually had higher unit prices.
While discounted items were on average cheaper than those not on promotion, it found examples, including on ketchup and laundry detergent packs, where they “had an equal or more expensive unit price than alternative pack sizes which were not on promotion.”
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The CMA said: “Our pricing analysis highlights the value of unit pricing when comparing between grocery items – revealing that shoppers’ commonly held assumptions about what products are cheapest on a per unit basis aren’t always right and that the pricing of some products relative to others can be surprising.”
The CMA is now urging supermarkets to make their prices clearer, arguing that shoppers will know they are getting a better deal if items are clearly labelled with how much an item is per unit.
The government is expected to bring in new rules to make labelling clearer, however the CMA said this could take some time to be rolled out.
It comes as the CMA has started its review into whether UK supermarket loyalty pricing is misleading shoppers.
The investigation, which began yesterday (30 January), will consider factors such as if a loyalty price is a genuine promotion or as good as a deal is presented, and will look into whether any groups of shoppers are disadvantaged by this type of promotional activity.
