Forget Brand Loyalty
September 24th, 2006 | by Brian Carr |Today’s tip sort of piggybacks off of my previous “Buy Generic Groceries” post, and may be able to help you save a bunch of money on your food bill.
While doing my weekly food shopping this morning, I realized there’s no reason why anyone should ever buy anything at the grocery store that isn’t on sale. It seemed that no matter what I wanted to buy, there was at least one brand that was on sale.
So, I decided to conduct an impromptu experiment.
Essentially what I did was go up and down the aisles of a local grocery store and pick out some name brand items that were on sale and compared their prices with other name brand items that weren’t on sale. Here’s what I came up with:
| Item |
Regular Price |
On Sale Price |
Difference |
| Hot Dogs | $ 4.19 | $ 1.99 | $ 2.20 |
| Doughnuts | $ 3.49 | $ 3.00 | $ 0.49 |
| Batteries | $ 6.99 | $ 4.50 | $ 2.49 |
| Pasta Sauce | $ 1.99 | $ 1.50 | $ 0.49 |
| Raisin Bran | $ 3.75 | $ 2.50 | $ 1.25 |
| Toothpaste | $ 3.49 | $ 1.00 | $ 2.49 |
| Potato Chips | $ 3.99 | $ 2.00 | $ 1.99 |
| Soft Drinks | $ 4.49 | $ 3.33 | $ 1.16 |
| Bathroom Cleaner | $ 3.99 | $ 2.79 | $ 1.20 |
| Ice Cream | $ 3.99 | $ 2.50 | $ 1.49 |
| Frozen Dinners | $ 3.19 | $ 2.00 | $ 1.19 |
| Total: |
$ 43.55 |
$ 27.11 |
$ 16.44 |
By simply not worrying about which name brand item was being purchased and just buying the item that was on sale, I would have saved over 37% on the above sample grocery list.
By saving only $25 per week by purchasing only the brands that are on sale, which would certainly be easy to do, you would be able to save $1,300 per year.
Seems to me that your purchasing loyalty should only be to which ever items are on sale!
