Will we really love Coles? Thoughts on a female-friendly publicity stunt
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The Howard government’s decision to charge GST on menstrual pads and tampons, with the logic that these are “luxury items”, has outraged Australian women since July 2000. This decision certainly seems odd, considering that products exempt from GST include sunscreen, condoms, personal lubricants, folate supplements and quit-smoking products. And Australian women aren’t alone in getting angry: British women have argued that pads and tampons should be sponsored by the National Health Service, while Americans want tampons to be free. Although there are other ways of preventing blood from dripping out between your legs to stain your clothes and smear all over floors and furnishings, disposable pads and tampons are still the mainstream choice for most menstruating Australians. There was some hope that the Rudd government would remove the GST, but things remain much the same. Then Coles came wading into this bloody standoff with a heroic promise to reduce the price of all its 100-odd feminine hygiene products by 10%. “You shouldn’t be taxed for being a woman,” said the Coles catalogue, adding that the supermarket chain would pay this onerous tax, “so that you don’t have to”.
The move came from Coles market research that showed 75 per cent of female respondents were unhappy with the price of feminine hygiene products. “We’ve acted on our customers’ concerns and so we’ve made an ongoing commitment to reduce the price of all feminine hygiene products sold in our stores by about 10 per cent, effectively removing the cost burden of the GST from our customers,” said Coles marketing director Joe Blundell. Catalogues are generally looked down on in the advertising world, being below the industry’s version of the Mason-Dixon line, but Coles has been doing some great catalogue work recently. That’s how we should consider this. It’s actually a brilliant marketing move to transform a routine price rollback into a political gesture, making Coles look socially responsible as well as responsive to its customers. It also woos new customers who might previously have shopped elsewhere. The commercial benefits of this policy to Coles are so far unclear. “We’ve had a lot of positive customer feedback, which didn’t come as much of a surprise to us — we’ve known for a while anecdotally that this was not a popular tax,” Coles spokesman Jim Cooper told Crikey. While Cooper was cagey about specifics, he did admit the price reduction had “a pretty solid sales benefit.” Coles also engages in other community-friendly price reductions. After feedback from customers following a recent fuel discount revealed that senior customers didn’t drive, and didn’t shop in large enough quantities to qualify for the discount, Coles today introduced a 24-hour, 10 per cent discount, storewide, for Seniors cardholders. However, the company will limit its goodwill to its own commercial activities. “We’re not a lobby group; we’re a retailer,” Cooper says. “We wouldn’t call it lobbying; we’d call it acting on customer feedback.” Just as well. As a political protest, it’s lazy and cynical. It hardly costs the retailer anything, and it doesn’t have to address the underlying situation. What’s next — promising to solve the problem of student poverty with a groundbreaking price reduction in instant noodles? Seriously, though, supermarket chains could totally take this war over menstruating customers much, much further. How about a permanent Red Spot Special at all Woolworths stores? And perhaps IGA could run a new ad campaign emphasising that, like pads and tampons, its stores come in three sizes: X-press, regular and Supa. They could also take a leaf from the booksellers and band together in a lobby group (the Coalition For Cheaper Tampons?). Then they could head to Canberra to lobby for the removal of the GST, thus becoming the heroes of women everywhere! As the Dymocks example has shown, commercial self-interest looks a lot better when it’s disguised as “thinking about the customers”. |
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11 Comments
This reminds me a little of the Marks and Spencer debacle in Britain. M & S attempted to charge extra money for larger bra sizes because, obviously, women can control the size of their breasts.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7501911.stm
Women revolted, and they had to revoke the policy.
“As a political protest, it’s lazy and cynical.” As a thought piece, THIS is lazy and cynical. Mel, you don’t honestly expect Coles to be staging political protests, do you? So why pretend to be shocked? Lame, lame, lame.
Mel, you’ll go a long way at Crikey (if you haven’t already).
A thoughtless whinge about a price reduction! Indeed it could have been written by a Green given their bizarre ideological hatred of all things corporate.
…”Howard government’s decision to charge GST on menstrual pads and tampons, with the logic that these are “luxury items”……
No - the Howard proposal (recently restated by Costello) was for everything to have GST and increased social services to be directed to those in need.
Government handouts, like GST exemption discounts, based on anything other than need are unfair on those in need who must therefore receive less. On the margin those in need must receive less social services in order to fund discounts to those without need who spent on product A rather than product B.
Though many of us would prefer to avoid tax, GST being based on actual consumption, rather than arbitrary definitions of income is, unlike some taxes, progressive. The ALP did a complete about face on GST, Keating originally proposed it. Hawke, in order to try to cut Keating down to size publicly abandoned it. Keating then won the “unwinnable” election by opposing it. Howard to his credit re-introduced what was originally an ALP idea. Australian Democrats insisted on an arbitrary range of feel good exemptions for their support of GST, causing the kind of anomolies (expensive gourmet fish is GST free as fresh food, a working man’s pie or pasty as a manufactured good is taxed etc ) that have uneccessarily complicated what would have been a simple virtually unavoidable tax based on the more you can afford to consume the more tax you must pay.
Exemptions can end up having unintended, unavoidable, costly and uneeded side effects. At a briefing on the GST for Tax lawyers and Accountants in early 2000 by the Australian Taxation Office, where the full range of Australian Democrat introduced complications, anomolies, discounts, and loopholes were discussed, I heard one attendee in exasperation cry out “who on earth voted for them”. Another more wallet focused attendee, to universal attendee acclamation responded “Well we all ought to next time”.
Yes I’d like to see razors and shaving cream GST free as well, but as a white male, I am discriminated against yet again.
Mel, your turn of phrase is superb. (I hope I was supposed to laugh!)
On a serious note, we can solve the debate on what should be gst free by removing ALL exemptions, creating the simple system it was meant to be.
People seem to be forgetting the Howard govenment wanted the GST to apply to all goods, but later introduced exemptions only to get it into legislation.
This is not political campaigning by Coles, but simply a clever marketing stunt. In reality Coles still pays the GST, but gives customers small discount.
I’m still waiting for them to do the same thing on shaving products as a step against discrimination of white males.
Seems to be many more “Bloke” subscribers than “Sheilas”… Anyone have any stats on that?
Would have expected more “Sheilas” to comment on this article….
I stocked up in June 2000, just before the introduction of the GST, and only started buying the damn things again recently.
Adam and Andrew - you can choose to grow a beard, and stop buying razors. Women don’t have a choice about not buying feminine hygiene products.
And women also use razors, so it’s not just you blokes who are being charged GST on this product. The only time I’ve ever heard of men using tampons is to stop bleeding noses on football fields. I was intrigued, but nobody has ever been able to confirm this for me. Anyone?
The Howard government didn’t “decide” to charge GST on menstrual pads and tampons, with the logic that these are “luxury items”. It was bullied into making stupid exemptions for some items, not including tampons — which had previously been tax exempt, contrary to urban myth.
GST isn’t a luxury tax, and the current grab bag of exemptions are not all essentials, and do not include all essentials — however you might define that.
If we think taxes should be used to reduce the price of tampons in a non-means tested way, leave gst out of it and just make the subsidy.
Oh, and Coles’ actions are just a marketing stunt. I can”t believe people take them seriously.
Oh, Adam, poor baby, fancy a white man having to purchase his own razor and shaving cream. Grow a beard you soft whinger