Pampers for baby bottoms, Coca-Cola for thirst and Dove for washing. You pay the top price for these A brands, especially in the Netherlands.
In our country, consumers pay considerably more for the A brands than elsewhere in Europe, and that annoys Joris Beckers of delivery supermarket Picnic. “Their cost price per product is almost identical, but the price differences per country are huge. That is why the Dutch pay billions of euros more for the same products than consumers in large countries such as Germany and France.” The company therefore buys their well-known brands in markets where prices are the lowest.
But why would you actually buy A-brands? Are they really that much better than the house brands – which are a lot cheaper? Our statement was therefore ‘You are stealing your own wallet if you buy A-brands’.
Pay for advertising
And a vast majority of readers – 86 percent – think so. Opinions differ a bit about the difference in quality between the expensive brands and the other brands. ‘In almost all cases private labels are just as good and yet cheaper. So why an A brand?’ And expensive brands better? ‘I get the strong impression that you mainly pay for the advertising’, one of the voters suggests.
Not everyone thinks so, even if they agree with the statement. Because, ‘certain products from an A-brand are tastier than a private label’.
To Germany
Some of the voters regularly deviate to our neighbors for groceries. ‘I buy it in Germany. They just have a price there. The Dutch price is higher so that they can do promotions such as 1 + 1 for free. Then I go once every few weeks and take several things with me at the same time.’
