PlayBrand v budget
Published: Friday, 13 March 2009, 11:02AM
Tonight in a unique experiment our Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis puts a family through the secret Double Downshift Challenge; to see if he can halve their food bill without them noticing the difference.
The Challenge
The Masters family from Dunstable, are high brand buyers, and spend £10,000 a year on food shopping for their family of four. Yet with everyone wanting to save money in these tough economic times, mum Elaine is keen to cut back.
The Downshift Challenge is about dropping a brand level on every product:
• Premium Range (e.g. Tesco Finest) DROPS to manufacturers brand (e.g. Kellogs)
• Manufacturers brand goes to supermarket own brand (e.g. Sainsburys)
• Own brand goes to value range.(e.g. Asda Smart Price)
Yet in this challenge the family will drop two brand levels, meaning their premium range goes to own brand, and their normal manufactured brand goods go to value range. And more importantly both the Dad, Tom, and younger brother, Luke, are unaware of the changes.
The food’s been disguised in different packaging and 12 year old Charlie is doing all the filming, apparently for a ‘school project’. That means it’s a true test to see if it’s retail snobbery or better taste that makes people prefer higher brands. The question is… will they notice the difference?
In addition to the Masters' experiment, the programme also includes 2 double downshift experiments: focusing on product areas where people often refuse to downshift - beauty and alcohol.
With the help of professional taster, Martin Isark we test 2 people who love to buy premium branded spirits, to see if they can taste the difference between the premium and own brands and reveal to them how much they could save if they double downshifted.
In the beauty experiment we take 3 ladies who regularly spend on premium beauty products and, with the help of beauty expert Bethan Cole, get them to test creams from different price bands (super premium, premium, high street and budget) and ask them to name which brand level each cream belongs to. They also find out how much they could save each year if they were to downshift.
Martin’s Top Supermarket Cost Cutting Tips
It’s not just downshifting that will save you money; there are a host of other tips too.
• Throw Use-Bys not Best-Befores. The use-by date is a health date and goods aren’t safe to eat after it. Yet best-befores (with the exception of Eggs) are different, it is purely an indication of when the food is of optimum quality, not of health and safety.
So much so there are even online shops that legally sell beyond best-before dated food and drink at cheap prices. For more information on this, see Martin’s full guide to slicing the cost of supermarket shopping at www.moneysavingexpert.com/supermarketshopping
• Downshift for online shopping. The supermarket shopping comparison site mysupermarket does an automatic online downshift challenge for you at lots of supermarkets. For more info www.mysupermarket.co.uk
• Remember downshifting is about price, not brand. Don’t be a slave to dropping a brand level if it costs more. For example if ‘own brand’ noodles were 50% off, making them cheaper than the value brand, then plump for the own brand.
• Download coupons to get instant savings. There are a host of supermarket coupons and vouchers you can instantly print out and take to the store to cut the cost of individual foods. Some supermarkets accept them even if you aren’t buying those specific goods. For Martin Lewis’ updated list go to www.moneysavingexpert.com/grocerycoupons
For more on Martin Isark’s professional food and drink tasting, visit: www.isark.co.uk. To find the tastiest own brands visit his site www.supermarketownbrandguide.co.uk which reviews supermarket own brands, pitting them against their brand name rivals and giving them a mark out of ten. Everything from shortbread to Chardonnay is covered.
For more information about retail research visit the Verdict Research website: www.verdict.co.uk
For more information about Antony Worrall Thompson: www.awtonline.co.uk/home.asp
Furniture in the beauty product challenge was provided by: www.sweetpeaandwillow.com