Around me it's the flavored ones that are expensive and plain is cheap but of course I hate the plain ones
this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2023
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The flavoured ones have been cheaper than the plain with the promotions that have been going around, but honey nut seems to always be the cheapest. It drives me crazy because not even "no name" branded “o cereal” is as cheap.
The store brand for me ONLY makes plain, no flavors...and I end up buying the name brand with a coupon but I always have to get 2 or 3 boxes at a time for the coupon
Sugar is a binder and filler and cheaper?
Both use sugar, but the honey nut also includes honey and other ingredients. Wouldn't that make it more expensive?
Perhaps demand?
Might have something to do with economies of scale. If they sell a lot more of the popular version it may be cheaper to produce and ship in bulk than the less popular version.
Sort of like buying 12 packs of something is almost always cheaper per unit than buying 2 packs.
This would make the most sense, until you look at sales and revenue.
Plain cheerios is still the company's best selling cereal (the best selling of all cereal ever), followed by honey nut. Outsell honey nut by 10 million boxes and having positive higher year-over-year sales (vs shrinking sales for honey nut). SOURCE
Despite selling 10 million more boxes, original cheerios makes the company $14 dollars more, so they have a higher profit margin.
The mystery continues, or perhaps I just solved it. General Mills doesn't have to sell plain cheerios for less, because there's no profit incentive to do so. 🤑
Perhaps just corporate greed then. They know they can charge more and people will still buy it, so they do. Actually they could probably charge even more per box and make more money, and even if demand drops a little because of it that won't matter much because they won't have to produce and ship as much, saving more money.
Price elasticity Look it up.
They're charging more for the plain product just because they can. Next door's competitor can make a better product, at a lower price, and people still won't switch.
Please don't give them any ideas! Food is hard enough to afford as it is 😂
I appreciate your investigative tenacity here! I have an idea, and I think I might be on to something. I don't have a marketing/sales background, but that's the approach I'm taking here. Here's my hypothesis. Plain cheerios and honey nut cheerios do not generally compete with one another in the eyes of the company that sells them - the two are bought by different groups. Plain cheerios has its loyal audience. But honey nut cheerios is purchased by people who may purchase one of the many popular sugary breakfast cereals. So the company charges more for plain just because they can, and the honey nut cheerios are priced more competitively to lucky charms and stuff like that to try to sell more boxes.
I'm probably going grocery shopping this weekend and I'm curious to check the prices out. I'm a toast person :P
I do think that's what's going on, and it's unfortunate for those who just want to save a bit of money.
Still, plain cheerios are still among the most affordable, but that could change on a whim.