Anyone notice Coles got 2 types of home brand products with different prices?
The cheaper variant usually in green & white color packaging.
Eg. frozen peas 1kg
$2 - in green & white bag
$2.60 - in blue & green bag
Others like,
salted mixed nuts - $3.5
olive oil 500ml - $3
Not sure what's the difference apart from packaging?
The label callout gives a good hint as to what Coles are doing here. "Australian" peas (complete with Aussie flag) is an appeal to the consumer to "trade up" to the Aussie product, supporting our farmers etc.
Of course, this is deception in the extreme, as the "cheap" peas are also 100% Australian grown. To go even further, it's highly likely they are the same product - at least the nutrition information panels on the website seems to imply this.
tl;dr - by making one product look ultra cheap, Coles can improve their margins by subconsciously shifting buyers to the more expensive product.
The answer to that question would depend on each individual product. But essentially, Coles is offering 2 types of products:
1) "Budget" - for people who would buy the cheapest and don't care about quality
2) "Premium" - to compete against other known brands
For peas, it probably is the same as fruits, where they are sorted into "perfect" / "not so perfect", where "perfect" fruits command a higher price even though they are exactly the same as the "not so perfect" ones.
However, this does not apply to all products. For example, "mixed vegetables"
https://shop.coles.com.au/a/a-national/product/coles-smart-b…
vs
https://shop.coles.com.au/a/a-national/product/coles-vegetab…
(The first one is seriously crap.)
Also, things like toilet paper. There is a significant difference is quality between the "budget" vs "premium" homebrand.
Cheapest coles brand peanuts - product of china
Less cheap coles home brand peanuts - product of australia
You sure do know about nuts
This can pretty much be said about all the low tier generic brand versus higher tier generic brand and branded product.
Even if they have the same ingredient listing, the quality of the ingredients used can (and does) vary dramatically.
(Source: worked in food manufacturing for 20 years and created modifications to existing recipes to utilise cheaper ingredients)
I have seen this even with sugar. Product has to be exactly the same though.
I guess you mean
https://shop.coles.com.au/a/a-national/product/coles-peas-au…
Vs
https://shop.coles.com.au/a/a-national/product/coles-smart-b…
Not sure but is there a distinction between "green peas" vs "peas"? (as per the ingredients)