Consumed: How We Buy Class in Modern Britain. Harry Wallop
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groups that were invented by marketing executives but took on a life of their own. Originally brought together by the supermarket’s own PR team in the run-up to the 2010 election, they were latched onto by the politicians – becoming the heirs to Mondeo Man and Worcester Woman, these mythical hard-working, aspirational, floating voters that had swung it for both Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. Both Cameron and Gordon Brown were persuaded to record special video messages for Asda Mums, along with famously taking part in biscuit-based webchats on Mumsnet.
Asda Mums now live on in the form of focus groups that the supermarket convenes to help it understand its customers better. I met some of them in Bootle, Liverpool, one of the poorest areas of the country, where the shiny new Asda stands across the road from the bleak Strand shopping centre, forever etched into the national consciousness as the setting of a grainy ten-second CCTV film – showing the last recorded moments of James Bulger’s life.
Asda attracts 18 million shoppers through its doors every week, so it is ludicrous to suggest its customers are one particular type. But Asda Mums are a particular sub-section and are more definable. They are mostly council house tenants, relentless about finding bargains and cutting down on food bills for themselves, but keen to give their children lunch-box treats of packaged goodies such as Dairylea Dunkers or Rice Krispie Squares. The name of a big, highly advertised manufacturer on the package makes them confident rather than sceptical about the wisdom of their purchase. And their anxiety about providing good food translates into buying a surprisingly large amount of organic food for their toddlers even though they know it costs more and is probably no better than standard. Again, it is the label rather than the content that gives reassurance. Strawberries are another popular snack among Asda Mums – further proof that this particular fruit has become so mass-market that it has lost all snob value. Raspberries are much smarter, but Rockabillies know that the only truly posh summer fruit to impress your guests with at a dinner party are gooseberries – preferably picked from your own garden.
Asda Mums, of course, can be found not just in Asda, but also in Tesco, Morrisons, Iceland and even Sainsbury’s. The key defining factor is not the name above the supermarket door as much as the attitude towards what they put in their basket. Despite their need and desire to keep their shopping bills down, they are curiously attracted to premium brands, with many of them unwilling to buy Smart Price goods. This is Asda’s range of own-label value food. One said: ‘I don’t know why I wouldn’t, I just presume it wouldn’t taste as good. There’s got to be a reason why it’s so cheap, and it’s not just the advertising. The quality would not be as good.’ Another said: ‘Two days before pay day, I would have nothing in the house, I would buy Smart Price. But I wouldn’t get Smart Price meat. I just wouldn’t buy Smart Price ham. Think of the tubes.’
Smart Price is at the bottom of Asda’s little ladder of brands, with Asda Chosen by You in the middle and Asda Extra Special at the top. Asda Mums know their place – firmly in the middle, and only reluctantly slipping down to the bottom when circumstances force them to.
This is in sharp contrast to Rockabillies, who don’t give two hoots about food brand, as long as it tastes nice and isn’t too expensive (in their eyes). They are happy to pop into Tesco or Asda without any hint of condescension; Sainsbury’s is their default supermarket but they would prefer Waitrose if one was available. This explains the success of the Waitrose Essential range of food. Waitrose is clearly at the top of the supermarket tree – it has been the champion of the Prince of Wales’s Duchy Originals produce, and seller of Charlie Bigham’s steak and ale pies which come in their own porcelain ramekins. The charity shops of Swaffham and Uckfield are awash with these little cast-off dishes. Stacked on a kitchen table, they are as obvious a trophy for a Waitrose shopper as a stolen Quaglino ashtray was for a Portland Privateer back in the early 1990s. Which other supermarket stocked £412 bottles of Château Mouton Rothschild? But during the recession of 2009 it started to lose customers, not just to Tesco but also to Aldi and Lidl. In response it brought out a value range called Waitrose Essential, which many thought would be a disaster – if you need to save money, stop shopping at Waitrose. Except it wasn’t really value at all. In fact, 1,200 of the 1,400 in the range were exactly the same – and the same price – as previous Waitrose own-brand products, but just repackaged in basic, white labels, I was told by the supermarket. It was all about kidding the customers that Waitrose wasn’t as expensive as they thought it was. When I asked, at the time, wouldn’t the well-heeled customers feel a little embarrassed about being seen popping a value range into their basket, the commercial director told me: ‘Far from it. We have found some customers putting their Waitrose goods in Tesco bags, because they are nervous that their neighbours will think they are decadent for shopping at Waitrose.’12 Rockabillies hate showiness when it comes to food, but quite like the good things in life, so they had found a brand just for them. Waitrose Essentials just a few years down the line sells more than £1 billion every year. That’s the power of reverse snobbism.
These clever sub-brands within supermarkets were the brainchild of Tesco – as so many supermarket innovations are – and were a response to another recession. It was its way of competing with the European supermarket companies known as ‘hard discounters’ coming to Britain in the early 1990s. They included Aldi and Netto, who, along with Kwik Save, started a major supermarket price war. This was the era of the 7p loaf of bread and the absurd situation of the 3p tin of baked beans – priced at less than the cost of the aluminium and beans themselves, let alone the cost of transporting the cans to store.
Tesco decided to make the price war permanent by launching Tesco Value. This would not just be a short-term promotion selling bargain beans, it would be a whole range of groceries packaged in utilitarian white, red and blue labels that shouted: cheap. Loo roll, washing-up liquid, digestive biscuits, bacon, bread … it offered an entire weekly shop on a cut-price budget. But what made Tesco such a pioneer was that it started to analyse customer data in astonishing levels of detail thanks to its Tesco Club Card, which had been launched in 1995. It had on file the postcode, date of birth and detailed spending patterns of millions of its customers. What day of the week you bought Tesco Value cheddar, when you splashed out on Brie, where you filled up with petrol, when you bought a pregnancy kit and even whether it had been positive (all those vitamin pills, and a drop in sales of white wine). The company was sitting on a database more valuable than the Office for National Statistics.
This data was initially used to help it be more accurate when it mailed out certain offers – there was no point posting a 10p-off voucher for nappies to a pensioner or sending a two-for-one beer offer to a teetotaller. The ultimate use of the data was in developing a strategy, which has now been adopted by almost all major retailers aiming at the mass market. They called it ‘good, better, best’. The Tesco Value line was good; their normal Tesco-branded products were ‘better’; and in 1995 it launched Tesco Finest, its ‘best’. At the time Tesco’s marketing director said the company’s ambition was to be ‘classless … to be the natural choice of the middle market’. But by segmenting and introducing Finest the company was able to attract a whole swathe of Middleton classes, those who might feel uncomfortable upgrading to Waitrose (or who don’t have one nearby) but are keen to assert their superior status, while still keeping Asda (or Tesco) Mums happy. This segmentation can be seen at Sainsbury’s, with its Basics, By Sainsbury’s and Taste the Difference, and at Asda, with its Smart Price, Asda Chosen by You and Extra Special. But it is also a tactic used by other shops including Marks & Spencer, B&Q and Homebase. It is now standard procedure among these big chains to analyse the customer base intensely and offer them within one shop an entirely different selection of products based on their socio-economic category. This gives customers the tantalising option of ‘trading up’ as well as the face-saving option of ‘trading down’ if they are short of cash but unwilling to suffer the shame of going to a more downmarket supermarket.
You might be one of 33 million shoppers who shop each week at Tesco, but by buying Finest you are in a separate class. Upgrade to Organic and you’re home and dry.
The real battleground was our old friend the ready meal. It was here that it was easiest to segment, to ‘add value’, as the jargon went, and indeed to strip out costs. M&S pioneered the concept, but as the microwave took off during the 1980s and 90s other supermarkets were able to develop a whole range