I spend an incredible amount of money in Tescos for the average person. I would estimate that my food bill might be something like £150 a month, for one person. Part of the reason, is that I am a bit of a brand snob. I would have to get the good stuff. This was until, I happened to chance upon some tomatoes, and I considered the Tesco value range.

Now, a few years ago, when the crappily-packaged Value range emerged, I remember thinking that they would sell a hell of a lot more of them if they put a bit of work into the packaging. But, having thought about it now, the crap packaging is intentional - and deliberately designed to target only the people who ‘have’ to buy it. In a great marketing attempt, average people like me are steered towards the good stuff - ensuring good profits for the stores.

Let’s take the case of the tomatoes. You can buy a value pack for 59p, which contains maybe 10. A standard Tesco pack costs 89p for 6, admittedly bigger ones in shiny plastic. And the whole hog, you can get ‘Finest’ for £1.39. For this you get a polythene tray, and also a stalk, so the pack can boast ‘on the vine’. 

What Tesco are doing here is segementing the market by cost. There are three clear categories here - and in fact this is repeated through most of the store on any product; there is the value version, the normal version, and the Finest version -all aimed at different people. Profit margins are the least on the value items - in fact, some stuff is known as ‘loss leaders’ - basically because the shops know that once people go in, they’ll spend a lot more money on other products.

Convergence of product quality would have bad effects for products higher up in the chain - so things have to be diffrentiated by quite a bit. Let’s say that the Finest products were priced really close - maybe 5% over the standard range - then people would buy these all the time. But, as you know, this isn’t the case - the premium is likely to be much, much more. If the Value products had the good packaging - then, they would sell loads - but at the extent of the normal products. Packaging is psychologically powerful here. If you don’t believe me, buy a Tesco Value bottle of Cola. Looks crap, doesn’t it. Now, take the sticker off, and put a Coca-Cola sticker on.

There are certain critical success factors that people associate with product quality, that the public are mistaken on. For example, the juice market. There is a misconception that thicker juice = better quality. So, this is pretty easy. Make the Finest juice thick, and the Value juice thin. Of course, thickness can be put into juice by a variety of means.  So, I’m not denying there is a variance in quality, but it’s much smaller than the packaging suggests.

It’s strange, because there are some Value products that I would eat without question. For instance, mushrooms. No problem. But some, I wouldn’t touch ever. But what am I basing this fear on? You assume it’s crap, because other people say it’s crap to make them look good. It’s like the bit in Fight Club: ‘What dinner set defines me as a person?’ People don’t want to be defined as poor, stingy, or cheapskates. So, people assiduously avoid that stuff, and trade up to the normal Tesco brand.

Of course, Tesco loves this - the profit margins are bigger on this. So, it’s going to nothing to rock the boat. Overtly promoting value is only going to cannabilise itself. And, when you think about it - the Value product is going to be made on exactly the same production line as the standard product - it would just be inefficient to do anything else.

I would like to theorise that the reason behind people not buying more value products is more psychological as opposed to any issue such as quality. And that effect is deliberately imposed, partially by the store, and partly by society itself.

I’m going to prove this by buying more Value products in future and making a direct comparison to the more expensive versions.