Market Madness – and, the Plot Thickens – (In)Digesting the Price of Butter in Suburban NJ – Part 3

 from Lexington, MA – 15 miles from Boston

My brother-in-law, Dave Hanley will often refer to his Situational Ethics class from back in his college days.  Funny, I haven’t seen this on any registration sites lately.  In fact, who even talks about Situational Ethics any more?  My kids probably wouldn’t even recognize the term, per se. But, aren’t we all called upon to invoke this phenomenon on a daily basis?  Honestly, we all see things in our environments that don’t seem ethical, right?  We all know that the concept of “fairness” comes into our psyches all the time.  I confess to remembering little about fair pricing from my college days and, since I am basically ignorant of the local law when it comes to fair pricing, I feel compelled to try to figure it out – if only just a little.  What is the difference between unethical pricing and illegal price-fixing?

As I mentioned yesterday, I got to wondering just how often we are taken advantage of in our local shopping.  For me, typically, if I think the price of an item in Kings, let’s just say, is too high, I will go to Shop Rite where, generally speaking the prices are somewhat or much lower, depending on the item.  In many cases, this is true for the exact same item – and in my town, the two stores are right across the street from one another.  For my shopping needs, it rarely makes sense for me to drive 20 minutes to a half hour longer to shop at the warehouse stores, and so I don’t.

The plot thickened a lot here yesterday.  How do you feel about paying $3.00 per pound more for butter at Shop Rite than at Trader Joe’s?  And so, it makes me wonder how many other pantry items we are overpaying for……………  I’m guessing most of us will increase our consumption of butter between now and year end, no?   We all know that retailers play games with pricing during the holidays – some items will go on promotion/sale and some other items will be kept artificially high.  But, there appears to be much more going on here!

Yesterday I broadened out my research into the local pricing of butter.  I have enlisted the help of a few family members and friends who are a little farther afield – in order to illustrate and verify the “issue” here in suburban New Jersey  – the issue I believe to be some sort of inappropriate price gouging or price fixing in local retail grocery stores.  This may be a function of the distribution process, whereby the distributor is keeping the price artificially high.  Whatever I do find, I will share it and you can send a message with your feet and pocketbooks! (some of you may not be familiar with the term “pocketbook”.

I spent a good part of the nasty weather day visiting some additional stores.  I went to Trader Joe’s and to Costco here in Morris County.

from Trader Joe’s (11/17):

   

half pound of Kerry Gold:

 – price/pound is $6.38

 

from Costco (11/17):

 price per 4 pounds of butter (11/17) – price per pound is $2.37

from Middlebury Connecticut:
Whole Foods, 11/9 , unsalted organic butter $4.79.
Stop and Shop, 11/17, Kate’s $5.89. S&S. Organic $5.69. Organic Valley,$6.59.
Cabots unsalted
$5.19. S&S regular $4.49.
Local organic food store, 11/17, Organic Valley, salted &3.99, unsalted 7.99!
BJ’s organic butters are about $7 for 2 lbs. but have been out of stock for at
least 2 weeks.

Yesterday, I wrote to Shop Rite, Stop and Shop, Land O Lakes, Hotel Bar, Breakstone, Governor Christie, Cory Booker and the NJ Dept of Consumer Affairs.  I am still getting very cooperative help from the people at Cabot’s.  No word from Vermont Creamery.

Today, I will visit Whole Foods in Madison, Wegman’s in Bridgewater and write a letter to the editor of the Star Ledger and Daily Record.

In the meantime, I hope you all will take a moment to consider the unconscious manipulation of the suburban consumer -it’s not conscious uncoupling – but perhaps it should be!

Will Keep You Posted!