You’ve heard of buy-one-get-one-free (bogof) offers in supermarkets. But have you laid your eyes on any buy-one-get-TWO-free deals? These have rocketed over the past year, but are they any good and will they last?
Supermarket special offers have been around for donkey’s years, but daft misprints on deals, such as one pack of Wine Gums for 63p or two for £2, get our goat.
However, when we are lucky enough to come across legitimate offers, they can be difficult to pass up.
At least, that’s what the supermarkets hope. And they’re trying even harder with the arrival of buy-one-get-two-free (bogtf) offers – there’s been a fourfold increase in these ‘too-good-to-be-true’ deals over the past year.
Supermarkets fight for our cash
As reported in our previous Conversation, many of us aren’t taken in by special offers, so supermarkets are making an extra effort to get our cash and increase their sales volume.
Morrisons is waving the flag for bogtf’s, with 85% of the deals being in its stores. Tesco is also following the trend, adding 35 to its shelves, according to BrandView.
I’ve seen bogtf’s myself and I must admit to being taken in. During my Halloween party shopping, Tesco offered Pringles with the multibuy offer, letting me stock up on my nibbles at just two quid for three packs. Bargain. The deal was so good that its label even featured a limitation of ’18 packets per customer’. I wasn’t quite that greedy.
Can bogtf offers actually last?
A promotions expert told The Grocer that supermarkets were using bogtf’s simply to hit sales targets and push themselves into positive growth, even if the deals ultimately resulted in a loss. One supermarket insider even warned that the heavy losses that come with many of these deals are completely unsustainable.
But what about us? Firstly these deals are only any good if there’s enough stock to support them. And like many of the offers you’ve told us about, they’re worthless if the individual item price has been artificially inflated for the offer period.
In our rubbish special offers Conversation, commenter Rina mentioned such an occurrence:
‘An offer in Tesco’s for Hoegaarden beer – four small bottles costing £5.09, buy two packs for £8 […] Today the offer is gone and guess what, a single four-bottle pack costs £4 – not a special offer. Seems a bit of price inflation going on to persuade people to buy more than they want in the belief they’re saving money.’
So are you happy to see bogtf deals on supermarket shelves, or do you think they’re just more of the same and should bog-off?