Are £10 Primark jeans as good as £90 Levis? Supershoppers investigates

19 July 2015

 

In a new consumer programme we explore money-saving revelations as presenters Andi Osho and Anna Richardson shop 'til the price drops and put a variety of products to the test.

Are £10 Primark jeans as good as £90 Levis? How do you get a half-price hire car? And can you make your supermarket loyalty card give you discounts on the products that you really want and use?

Supershoppers airs Monday (20 July) at 8pm on Channel 4.

Jeans

The UK jeans market is worth over £2 billion, with varying price points from £10 up to hundreds of pounds for a single pair. But what are we paying for? Is there a difference in the quality, or are we merely forking out for a label? Andi and Anna put this to the test with a £10 pair from Primark and a £90 pair of Levi’s.  Were the Levi’s really nine times better and is it therefore worth paying for the big brands?

In street tests, most punters struggled to tell the two jeans apart. Next the Supershoppers’ team put both pairs through industry standard lab tests – including durability, shrinking, colour fading and strength. While the Levi’s jeans had slightly higher cotton content, both pairs of jeans fared well in the laundry test, with no significant shrinkage or fading, but both did less well in the rubbing test, which measures how badly the denim stains other surfaces while damp. The Primark pair failed completely and the Levi’s only just passed.

Levi’s pride themselves on the durability and strength of their jeans, with their logo even claiming two horses couldn’t pull them apart. But when the lab tested the jeans’ strength, surprisingly it was the Primark pair that came out on top. Plus when we recreated their famous horse test, Levi’s jeans ripped straight away.

 

Levi’s right to reply:

Levi’s emphasised their social responsibility and said, “We question the methodology applied to the tests performed by Channel 4 – especially when compared to the thorough consumer testing processes we employ.” On the horse test Levi's said, “We stand behind our brand promise of delivering thoughtfully crafted, durable products that our fans can really live in.” 

 

Chocolate

Like all chocolate manufacturers, Cadbury’s have always launched new products, but recently it’s been remarkable just how many of the new launches contain fillings – biscuits, sweets, even banana pieces (with no banana). Cadbury’s latest launch is the new ‘Puddles’ bar – Dairy Milk chocolate with sugary liquid fillings. So what’s going on? Why more fillings and less chocolate? Chocolate expert Angus Kennedy suggests that cocoa butter and cocoa are the most expensive ingredients in chocolate, and sugar is the cheapest. Adding sugary fillings to the bar makes them much more profitable.

 

Cadbury’s right to reply:

Cadbury’s said, “We’ve been putting other ingredients into chocolate for nearly a century since the launch of Fruit and Nut. These ingredients add interest and variety." 

 

Loyalty Cards:

Loyalty cards provide big supermarkets with excellent research on their shoppers; it’s a really easy way for them to track our shopping habits. They can use this information to promote other items, which is why it can sometimes feel as if they know what we’re about to buy before we do. But it may be possible to play the cards differently and turn that information to our own advantage.

The Supershoppers suggest buying dog treats and dog toys alongside your normal food shop, which gets tagged by your loyalty card, but keeping the dog food separate. That way, the card will notice you're buying items that are usually bought with dog food, but you're not buying the food itself.  The supermarket now knows you have a pet but assumes you are buying your dog food elsewhere. Next thing you know you may receive shopping vouchers and discounts to buy your pet’s dinner…

 

Car rental:

Hiring a car can be an expensive business, and prices fluctuate hugely. The Supershoppers have discovered a simple trick of selecting a different drop down box when booking online on the Hertz website which will slash the price of your car hire.

The Supershoppers booked a car from the Hertz website and were initially quoted £25 per day for the hire (Group C car (Ford Focus or similar)). But by clicking on the dropdown menu in the top right corner and changing the country of origin to Norway, they only paid 198.50 Norwegian Kroner per day – just under £17 – a whopping 36% discount.

They compared prices a week later and on the day they checked the Hertz site, they were quoted £67 for a 1 day car hire (again, Group C car (Ford Focus or similar)). But by changing the country of origin they were quoted wildly different prices.

Australia - £49
Japan - £175
United Arab Emirates - £67 (same as UK price)

Cleverly the online algorithms change daily, so the nationalities with the best deals change every day – but with a bit of perseverance it’s easy to hunt around for the countries offering the best price and book it as you would normally.

 

Aldi/Lidl:

Aldi and Lidl are the new kids on the block, and they know just how to market their brands and goods to appeal to their customers. Discount stores know we love their basic range prices but we might be sceptical about the quality, so they have found a few wily ways around this.

Aldi and Lidl manage to achieve huge levels of cost-cutting by stocking a high proportion of own-brand goods, meaning they don’t have to split profits with brand manufacturers. However, in a cheeky marketing slight-of-hand, their own-brand products look astonishingly like brands that we know and love – at a fraction of the price.  In addition, they deliberately position many of their ranges upmarket from their lookalike products, and they also brand their tea using different brand names - Aldi’s own label tea isn’t sold under the Aldi name but branded as ‘Diplomat’. Lidl’s own label tea is called ‘Knightsbridge’. These teas have won industry awards for their quality, but would people think they taste differently if they came in a box with the supermarkets’ name prominently on it? The Supershoppers test this out with hilarious results. 

 

Activity Bands:

The UK Sportswear industry is worth over £5billion annually, from trainers to gym kit to wearable tech there are a huge range of products on the market aimed and making us fitter and healthier. There has been a huge boom in the activity band market with devices retailing from about £50 upwards. Many of these bands claim to measure how many steps you are taking and how many calories you are burning. But how do they actually work?

The Supershopper trialled the UK’s three most popular bands - the Fit Bit, the Jawbone UP24 and Misfit Shine to see just how well they measure calories burnt and steps taken. Roger Kerry, a member of the University of Nottingham’s Faculty of Medicine and Health spoke to the Supershoppers about how these bands work. ’Activity bands are doing one thing, they are measuring motion… it’s not an actual measure of your calorie use, there are certain ways of doing that but you can’t do it with a wrist band.’

These fitness bands don’t accurately measure steps or calories, but how much you are moving your arm around. We put all three to the test, sitting at our desks for an hour without getting up from our chairs, and the bands measured wildly different step counts.

Jawbone UP24 – 98 steps

Fitbit – 117 steps

Misfit - 356 steps

So it seems that we can trick these bands into giving us the results we want to see - even picking up a pint in your local can ‘improve’ your step count if you move your arm enough!

 

Activity Band Right To Reply:

All three brands say these wristbands help users monitor overall activity levels.

Jawbone said, “While we’re always looking at ways to improve accuracy, the most important thing is to allow our users to achieve their broad goals and motivate them."

Misfit said, “We’ve done extensive scientific testing to make sure our products are accurate.”

And Fitbit said, “We rigorously test the accuracy of our products… When doing arm movements the device can pick up extra steps … [but] the amount of stray steps is negligible.”