Here in the US, supermarkets do not manufacture their own brand of baked beans. In fact, they manufacture very little of their own brand of anything. Brand name companies manufacture these specially packaged items for them at a discounted rate. It's a way for the brand name companies to sell more volume ($$$) and for supermarkets to charge less, again more volume. It's similar to Ford buying a car (complete) from Mitsubishi with the Ford name on it from and selling it as a Ford.
I don't believe this is wrong or immoral (just my opinion). Ford stands by the product, maintains it and takes the heat if things go wrong. They (Ford) put their stamp of approval on the subcontracted product. Same with the supermarkets... See comment on Rumsfeld speak. Regards, Bob... -------------------------------------------- "History is not a school-mistress. She does not teach. She is a prison matron who punishes for unlearned lessons." -- Vasily Klyutchevsky, Russian historian > From: Bob Walkden [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Hi, > > Monday, December 1, 2003, 6:32:51 PM, you wrote: > > > Have you ever bought a supermarket's own brand baked beans? > > > The supermarket is making a profit on both the sale and > manufacture of the > > beans, whereas if you buy a brand name, the profits are split > between the > > two companies. > > > But does this make it wrong or immoral for the supermarket to do this? > > Rather surprisingly, supermarkets don't make a profit on beans (I know > this doesn't affect the point of your reply). The cost of handling > each tin, including scanning and packing at the checkout, is more than > the markup. Competition is so fierce that they can't raise the price > to a profitable level, or decide not to stock them, because nobody > would shop at a supermarket that didn't sell beans, or sold them for a > lot more than their competitors (I exclude places like Fortnum & > Mason here). This is true for a surprising number of other items, too. > > -- > Cheers, > Bob mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always > interesting to me, > because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we > know we know. > We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know > there are some > things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns the > ones we don't > know we don't know." > > ---Donald Rumsfeld (http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/footinmouth.html) The above was a verbal representation of a Johari Window. See: http://www.augsburg.edu/education/edc210/johari.html
