
Nutella 'riots' spread across French supermarkets - plasticchris
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42826028
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chrisaycock
The supermarket is being investigated for "product dumping":

[https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2018/01/30/581843472...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2018/01/30/581843472/fraud-officials-are-investigating-sales-that-caused-
nutella-riots-in-france)

France has strict rules about when a product can be sold for below cost.

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mrarjen
Thanks for the share, this is even more interesting than a small scale black
Friday. :)

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livatlantis
I really don't see why this is international news.

One supermarket chain in France gives a substantial discount on a product that
kids love, some people in _a few_ of these stores go nuts, this is then filmed
and uploaded to the internet.

What are we to make it of? Depends. My guess is that lot of these people are
presumably low-income and aren't always able to buy Nutella for their kids. Or
they are, but it's a significant part of their weekly grocery bill. So I
suppose it was kind of a big deal in that regard, to be able to buy their kids
the real deal instead of generic supermarket brands. (Pretty much the same
thing, but try to explain that to little kids). In which case it's all a bit
tragic, really. Or maybe that's not it at all and the story is about the
lengths to which deal-hunters will go for a few euros. But the news doesn't go
into all of this — the report was that people went crazy and fought each other
for cheap Nutella across French supermarkets.

In any case, it's odd for such an isolated, specific incident to receive
international coverage. This isn't even that interesting to people living in
France unless you want to try to understand understand the sociology/economics
of it.

 _shrugs_

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tnzn
And the worst part is, a lot of the pseudosociological analyses I've seen of
this event were uninteresting. Since I'm french, my fb feed was flooded by
that. And people acted surprised and looked down on that. Some left
politicians decided to play the "this is proof of misery, these people have no
money to buy that". And even the few posts I adhered to (that it was mostly
just an instance of the power of marketting and consumerism) were just too
obvious and shallow to be interesting.

This is interesting for left politicians who want to intrumentalize that. For
smartasses who like to look down on others because they are soo free of
consumerism (they are not). But to be interesting for sociologists, it'd
require a more in depth study implying those concerned. Or maybe... A study of
the media coverage and reception of the "phenomenon", which would imo be way
more interesting when it comes to analysing today's society than yet another
show of black-friday-like craze.

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awakeasleep
Is there any chance Nutella would stop using palm oil as the base of their
spread?

People love nutella so much, it's a real shame it has such a terrible impact
on the planet.

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skellera
Ferrero apparently only sources “sustainable” palm oil. Don’t know how
reliable that is but if it’s true then it’s not a big issue.

~~~
tnzn
Probably as reliable as cigarette propaganda of mid XXth century. At least
that's my wild guess

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scentoni
Now France will understand Black Friday

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ggregoire
We have the same discount days/weeks in France and the same riots at the
opening of the stores. It's just not called Black Friday.

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Voloskaya
Black friday's riots are on a whole other level than "les soldes" in France...
Part of the reason might be that black friday is a single-day event.

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shafyy
" _Intermarché supermarkets offered a 70% discount on Nutella, bringing the
price down from €4.50 (£3.90) to €1.40._ "

I think this tells us so much about the financial literacy of today's society.
And also quite something about the human psychology.

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vog
Do you care to elaborate? What exactly does this tell us about our financial
literacy?

~~~
shafyy
Sure. I see several points:

\- It seems to me that people buy stuff they don't really need just because
it's discounted

\- When the relative discount is large but the absolute discount tiny, people
tend to overestimate the value they're getting

\- Lower income folks tend to spend more on materialist things that they don't
really need, but when it comes to essential items like food, they try to save
money

I just can't believe that people go this crazy over a couple of euros in
savings. Maybe someone with a psychology background can help me out? :-)

~~~
tnzn
You mean marketing tricks people into buying stuff they don't need ? Now
that's news

As for your question, it's mostly marketing plays with knowed biases and
affects. And low-income people are all the more pressured to buy stuff on
discount because they feel like they can only get it now. When you earn 5k a
month, you don't really care about a discount, you can buy that Nutella
whenever you want.

As for their saving on important stuff while spending on consumerist stuff,
they just follow the norms we push down their throats. Nobody knows you eat
pasta and shower with cold water. Everybody can see your 5 years old
smartphone and dirty cloths.

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shafyy
Yes, that makes sense, thanks for expanding. Do you think better financial
literacy education could decrease this problem?

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tnzn
I guess it would, but teaching financial litteracy, like any kind of
litteracy, goes beyond just teaching facts. It's a whole culture, a whole set
of behaviors that needto be taught. And I don't see it happening in a society
which "needs" docile consumers.

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ggregoire
I wish peanut butter would be more popular in France. Nutella is basically the
breakfast AND the break of 4PM for millions of people here. This country is
addicted to sugar.

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sevensor
Is nutella better in France? I find it too sweet and not very nutty. Not worth
rioting over.

~~~
Reason077
It's exactly the same product in France. Nutella once was primarily a hazelnut
paste, flavoured with cocoa and a bit of sugar. Over many years it became
primarily a sugar and palm oil base, flavoured with a little (13%) hazelnut.

In Italy, however, you can buy many other locally-made brands of hazelnut
spread which still contain 50% or more hazelnut. Much tastier, probably
healthier, and in Italy they're not all that much more expensive than Nutella!

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lukasm
Pr stunt out of control.

