Major chemists' colourful promotional tags are confusing shoppers who may be duped into believing they are receiving a discount, according to new research.
Consumer Advocacy Group, Choice, asked more than 1,000 consumers if they could tell if price tags, usually bright yellow or pink, at Chemist Warehouse, Priceline, and Terry White represented a discount on the usual price.
One in three shoppers surveyed said they found it difficult to determine if the item was discounted or not.
Choice also found a number of products at these major brand Australian chemists had colourful supersized tags that obscured smaller shelf labels offering the same prices.
It meant some customers thought they were getting discounts that did not exist.
"Our new research has found that those yellow and pink sales tags consumers are often bombarded with in pharmacy aisles are highly confusing," Bea Sherwood, senior campaigns and policy adviser at Choice, said.
Marketing psychology using colourful price tags may trick shoppers
Swinburne University marketing professor,? Sean? Sands? said retail signage could influence consumer behaviour through subtle psychological cues.
"Bright, bold price tags, especially in colours typically associated with discounts like red or yellow, can trigger assumptions of savings, even when no discount is offered," he said.
"This taps into what behavioural economists call?heuristic processing, where consumers rely on visual shortcuts to make rapid decisions, particularly in busy retail environments," he said.
Australian National University marketing lecturer, Andrew Hughes has researched the role of emotions and emotional responses in communications and marketing.
He said some big brand pharmacies used unethical marketing tactics, "which should be illegal," to drive sales.
Professor Hughes said the overuse of colourful price tags created an emotional response in consumers who felt they were getting the best price, when in reality, that was not always the case.
"It's in every single aisle to the point where it's saturated," he said.
"So the consumer would believe that in every single aisle in every category, there's a bargain to be had.
"But we have no reference point to ensure that we are getting a bargain."
Legal 'grey area'
Professor Hughes said using marketing like this was not necessarily illegal, which has made it hard to regulate.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission states that businesses must not mislead customers, including by offering a displayed price against a recommended retail price that the product has never been sold at.
Professor Hughes said what constituted as misleading customers could be a "grey area" which could be used against the consumer.
"There's very few areas where you are breaking the law in pricing," he said.
"So as long as you're not misleading consumers about the pricing...they know that consumers are vulnerable to it and are able to be exploited," he said.
He said slowing down when at these big stores and thinking about the prices objectively could help shoppers sift out the marketing tactics from the real bargains.
"We're all pushed for time, and they use that against the consumer, your lack of time, the fact you're busy," he said.
But these marketing ploys were not exclusively used by the major brand pharmacies, he said.
"Once the big players do it, everyone else goes well, 'either I do what they do or I lose my business' and follow the same pricing models, because they want to be tapping into that sort of same style of marketing," he said.
Choice has also called for better transparency on pharmacy labels, particularly the use of "recommended retail prices" which could result in people overestimating the value of the deal on offer.
Priceline told Choice that one of its labels, Love Lower Prices, did represent a discount, but another, Great Value, did not.
Chemist Warehouse, Terry White Chemist have been contacted for comment.
