Unit pricing – comparing costs and value – part 2

I previously wrote about unit pricing here http://tradingstandardsblog.co.uk/unit-pricing-comparing-costs-and-value

To summarise, unit pricing requires retailers to show how much something costs by some form of unit so that consumers can compare costs across range.

Below is a photo taken at Tesco

20 Jaffa cakes is £1.60 making it 8p per cake

30 Jaffa cakes is £2.50 making it 8.4p per cake (rounded from 8.33)

This of course goes against the assumption that most people have – that the more you buy of something, the cheaper it is (which is probably true generally).

In this case it is not.

What is more interesting is why Tesco have chosen to give unit pricing for the 2 pack in grams and for the 3 pack the price per cake.

The whole point of unit pricing is to make it easy for consumers to compare prices without having to do calculations.

On this occasion, someone might make a decision they otherwise wouldn’t have if the unit pricing was done consistently. One wonders why Tesco would do this, considering it probably causes more complexity on their own internal stock system. And why is no one checking?

The Tesco website currently shows unit pricing in the same way.