And lo on Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:04:16 +0100, Jim Henderson  
<nos### [at] nospamcom> did spake, saying:

> On Fri, 15 Aug 2008 09:08:45 +0100, Phil Cook wrote:
>
>> And lo on Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:29:52 +0100, Jim Henderson
>> <nos### [at] nospamcom> did spake, saying:
>>
>>> Was "make it *better* than the competition" in there anywhere?
>>
>> I guess that's covered by the "don't let someone sell both coke *and*
>> pepsi". You don't need to make a better product if you don't present the
>> consumer with a choice.
>
> Heh, well, I know for many of the fast food chains, they don't have a
> choice, because they're actually owned by Pepsico or Coca-Cola.  I used
> to work for a company that did outsourced benefits management (for both
> companies, oddly enough), and seeing the brands that came in with those
> agreements was surprising.

Kind of the current joys with the privatised water companies here where  
you can choose to have your water supplied by Company A, Company A or  
Company A. But hey at least the fast-food companies are agreeing to this  
;-)

>> As an example my mother often complains she can't pick up a certain
>> brand of sauce at her main shop supermarket and has to go elsewhere; I'm
>> running an internal bet as to how long it'll be before she either starts
>> doing the main shop in this other store or ends up buying a different
>> brand.
>
> That'd be an interesting thing to look at....

Indeed something that should have been carried out by the Competition  
Commision in their last study if their brief wasn't so restricted. Oh yes  
there's plenty of competition between supermarkets provided you do one  
third of your shopping in Sainsbury's, one-third in Tesco, and the  
remainding third at Asda. Doesn't everyone shop this way?

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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