The latest supermarket marketing attempts

I was a little annoyed this week when I received my mid-week catalogue delivery, my Woolworths catalogue was wrapped in plastic!  I have never been a fan of catalogues wrapped in plastic, especially when there is no obvious reason for it, no inserts, freebies etc.  However, on closer inspection I realised there was a sticker sheet attached to my catalogue, so that was the reason for the plastic wrap, although it's still a terrible waste of resources in my opinion (but that's another story).

The idea is that you receive a sheet of stickers, to be used on specific products only, that will give you a discount on that particular product once you attach the sticker to the item.  For example, there was a $1 off sticker for Cadbury chocolate blocks. This while exercise seemed pointless to me, often Woolworths will offer these discounts in their catalogues anyway, so I'm guessing it's a bit of a marketing gimmick.  Judging by your comments on our Facebook pages this week, not many of you are impressed.

Another question raised on Facebook this week, and one I have always wondered myself, is why are such a great portion of discounts on unhealthy, heavily processed products, such as chips, chocolates and soft drinks?  This applies to both the new sticker promotion and the weekly supermarket catalogues (all supermarkets are guilty of this one).  I'm not sure about you, but I have absolutely no interest in the products, so if any of the higher powers in the supermarket world are listening, can we please have some healthier specials?  I seriously skip over the first 75% of supermarket catalogues (except Drake and Foodland/IGA, who do seem to offer a greater portion of healthy food discounts).

Back to the sticker discounts, this seems to be the latest in the big supermarkets attempts in gaining our loyalty, with the Coles My 5 promotion and the Flybuys re-launch, and Woolworths Everyday rewards member discounts with the orange tags.  Are the massive amounts of money they must be spending worth it?  This latest attempt has me wondering if we are heading the way of the USA with their coupon culture, where to gain a discount you need to cut a coupon out of the catalogue and take it to the store.  As a mum of a toddler, who has time, for stickers and coupons (which would no doubt end up lost thanks to the toddler on the way to the supermarket anyway)? I say let's just stick to the catalogues!