Why are supermarkets allowed to charge 2.5 times as much when you buy 1 pint of milk as opposed to 4 pints of milk?

[DogDayze]

In sainsburys,
4 pints of semi-skimmed = £1.45 which is £0.64 per litre
2 pints of semi-skimmed = £1.15 which is £1.01 per litre = an increase of 37%
1 pint of semi-skimmed = 85p which is £1.50 per litre = an increase of 136%

This seems designed to screw the single person who doesn't use much milk (or those people who don't understand the price differential).

ok, there's slightly more packaging and it takes up fractionally more space but nothing like enough to justify those increases.

I was shocked that 4 pints milk in the Coop cost £1.80.😯

Not the point of the thread, but I buy the 4pint ones to save money and then refil my 2 pint milk bottle and freeze the rest as ice cubes, it lasts ages and an ice cube of milk is normally the right amount for a coffee

They can charge what they like for any item, up to us whether we pay it. I do get what you're saying though, and I appreciate people on their own probably feel like they're paying over the odds for a smaller container.

As a single person it is so annoying.

Freezing multiple pints of milk isn't practical when you only have 3 small drawers of a freezer.

Exactly. I'm more annoyed that you can't buy a small chocolate bar or bag of crisps without paying far more per item than a multipack.

You have a choice between one thing for 70 p or 4 for £1 and we all know that if you buy 4, you'll likely eat 4 straight away.

But, I don't understand people who say things like I suspect there are people buying the smaller bottles for convenience who don't realise they are paying a lot more for it.

Doesn't anyone look at prices when they buy things?

There are people with eyesight problems or who may not be very good at maths who don't realise they are paying a lot more for a basic neccessity.
It's different for chocolate or other luxury goods.

But i bet they factor in costs that are fractional to us but mount up when applied on a vast scale, such as the labour it takes to stack shelves full of smaller bottles, the fact that it takes as long for a cashier to swipe a pint bottle as a litre bottle etc. Those costs are the same whether the bottle is small or large so you pay a higher proportion cost. I always just buy the bigger cartons. You can freeze milk.

If it was to do with the size of the bottle then the jump in price from 2 to 4 pints (36%) should be similar to the jump between 4 and 6 pints (<1%).
So it's obviously not that.

But you aren’t getting it. A 4 pint doesn’t cost 4 times a 1 pint because some costs are fixed regardless of the size of the bottle.

so all the packing, label, handling, lid, filling, staff costs etc is 75p per bottle. Doesn’t matter what size the bottle is those are the fixed costs.
milk costs 10p a pint

so a 1 pint is 75p + 10p = 85p
and a 4 pint is 75p + 40p = £1.15
and a 6 pint is 75p + 60p = £1.35

Plus. 1 pints are not as frequently bought as 2 or 4 pints so the supermarket will get a lot more wastage of out of date 1 pints than they will 4 pints so that will also be factored into the cost somewhere

The actual milk will be a small part of the price.

Selling 4 x 1 pint will use 4 times as many labels and bottle caps as selling a four pint bottle. The plastic bottle may be proportionally smaller, but I bet it also costs more to make 4 x 1 pint bottle compared to one four pint bottle.

This is nonsense. The supermarket knows how much it sells of each type and will buy stock accordingly.

They don't buy stock that they know they won't sell.

Exactly. I once went to a plastic bottle factory for work. There was the same amount of plastic in a small bottle as a large one, and we can see in the supermarket that the lids are all the same size.

It was just that the machine that made the bottles blew the large bottles out to a bigger size. Milk bottles might be the same.

Because they're a business? This is basic economy?

Of course, you could look at it that the cost of 1 pint is the true price and you're getting a discount if you buy 2 or 4 pints...

This has been so common in the US and (to a lesser extent) Canada to such an extreme degree for so long that some states and provinces have put in legislation to limit the practice, either across the board of for certain "essential" staples like milk. I've not seen it much with milk; it's usually non-perishables and "luxury" items; things like fizzy drinks are a classic.

It's not so much the price of a smaller container versus a large one, although that certainly happens, but things like buy one twelve-pack for $5.99, but if you buy four they're 2.99 each. Any that fall out of the multiples are full price - so if you buy five you only get the low price on 4. It's also quite common in unregulated places to see, for example, a two liter bottle of Coke, on its own, costing either less or one or two cents more than a 250 ml bottle.

This seems designed to screw the single person who doesn't use much milk (or those people who don't understand the price differential). Also people living on very small amounts of money at a time, people travelling, people without a lot of storage (and in some cases freezer) space at home which is often people in bedsits/SROs/etc., disabled people, and people without access to a car.

It’s about price competitiveness, not cost of production. The 4 pint bottle is by far the best seller, therefore along with bananas, white sliced bread, baked beans etc etc one it’s the most price-sensitive lines in the shop. Retailers know that customers are very sensitive to the prices of these things which they buy every single week, and that these lines are what drives consumer perception of price competitiveness.

It’s not the price of the milk that is different on different sizes. It’s the cost of the packaging. It’s not that 4 pint bottles are cheaper than 1 pint bottles, it’s that they aren’t significantly more expensive. That means that when you buy one pint, the cost of the packaging is a high percentage of the final cost. With a 4 point bottle, the cost of the packaging is only fractionally more and so it isn’t double the price for double the milk.

I suspect this is probably the best explanation.
Milk is often a loss leader and it's probably is the family size bottle 4/6 pints that's used in comparisons of supermarkets.
So the 4/6 pint bottles are kept artificially low partly paid for by over charging on the 1/2 pint bottles.

My sympathy is with the cows that are exploited and have a miserable life.

If you want to support farmers buy your milk from a local dairy that delivers rather than plastic milk from the supermarket.

We get glass bottles of organic milk delivered and it costs 90p per pint which includes a proper mark up for the farmer.

That's what I was trying to say but your version is clearer.