It can sometimes seem that marketing by retailers has been reduced to just one factor – price. As if prices are the only thing that matters. It’s true that when it comes to choosing a supermarket, consumers rank price equal top with convenience, but perhaps that’s just a function of the relentless marketing emphasis.

Yet it is not as simple as that and it never has been. The old saying that “retail is detail” is as true now as it ever was. Few people buy something simply because it is low priced; there are plenty of other factors that are also very important.

In Mintel’s Supermarkets – UK, November 2015 report, we asked what the most important factors were in choosing a store.

We gave people a list of 12 attributes and asked them to pick five and then rank them in order of importance. The top rank put price and convenience more or less equal top.

Figure 1: The most important attribute for a supermarket, August 2015

Base: 1,823 internet users aged 16+ who are responsible/jointly responsible for grocery shopping

Source: Lightspeed GMI/Mintel

However, only a quarter chose price, and perhaps, just to look at the top rank is misleading. Looking at what factors people put into their top five gives a more nuanced impression:

Figure 2: Any factors in top five in choosing a supermarket, August 2015

Base: 1,823 internet users aged 16+ who are responsible/jointly responsible for grocery shopping

Source: Lightspeed GMI/Mintel

This chart puts price in perspective. In fact it now ranks after convenience, while availability and quality are now very important as well.

There’s a contradiction here in people’s attitude to promotions. The above chart suggests that for half of grocery shoppers promotions are important. But that is not the impression when you ask directly about them.

For example, most of the grocery multiples are following Aldi and Lidl in adopting everyday low pricing (EDLP). Judging by the answer to the next question, this is absolutely the right thing to be doing. It is rare that one gets such unanimity in response to any consumer question.

Figure 3: Attitude towards EDLP, August 2015

Base: 1,823 internet users aged 16+ who are responsible/jointly responsible for grocery shopping

“I would rather have lower prices across the store than a few promotions”

Source: Lightspeed GMI/Mintel

This ties in with the results of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) Report, which was published a couple of months after this research was carried out.

The results also support the idea that there is considerable consumer fatigue with the relentless emphasis on price.

Take the results of the next question. The result is not as unequivocal as the previous one, but still only 20% of the sample thought that there was any real difference in prices.

Figure 4: Attitude towards supermarket pricing, August 2015

Base: 1,823 internet users aged 16+ who are responsible/jointly responsible for grocery shopping

“Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Tesco and Asda all have similar prices”

Source: Lightspeed GMI/Mintel

The most damning finding of all came from the research for Mintel’s Christmas Shopping Habits – UK, February 2016 report.

Figure 5: Is it worth paying full price for Christmas gifts? January 2016

Base: 1,865 internet users aged 16+ who bought gifts for Christmas

“The promotions available around Christmas mean you that you don't need to pay full price for gifts”

Source: Lightspeed GMI/Mintel

It seems to us that one of the principal results of online development and especially of mobile, is that people are better informed. They can, and do check prices while they are out shopping. The net effect of that, plus the increasingly common price promises is that far from seeing an increase in price competition we are moving steadily to a state of price uniformity.

But we still have the situation where too many retailers adopt the practice of starting at a high price that they can then discount to make it look more attractive.

Consumers are becoming wise to that, and don’t always trust price discounts.

The shining exception to this is a small band of retailers, led by Next, which set the price at the beginning of the season and only discount to clear stock at the end of the season. Next understands that trust and pricing integrity are all important. Cutting prices during the season to solve a short term stock problem is a natural short-term expedient, but it comes at a longer-term cost.

Retailers need to price honestly and then their marketing can focus in on everything else that makes them great.