Bathroom retailers in the UK fall into two camps; those who offer 'Every Day Low Prices' and those who offer different levels of discount. Twenty years ago, almost every retailer used aggressive promotional discounts to attract customers thought their doors. However, as we've gradually become wise to these tactics, more and more retailers are moving to an every day low price or always low price model.
Everyday low price, often abbreviated as EDLP, is a retailer pricing strategy promising consumers a low price without the need to wait for sale price events or comparison shopping. EDLP strategies generally result in lower costs for the retailer, as they're not required to spend significant sums of money on advertising their short-term promotional prices. In addition, less store labour is needed to make all the price changes, simpler pricing and stock management systems are required with lower overheads. Over time, EDLP can result in more predictable consumer demand as they don't have the same peaks and troughs and therefore they experience fewer stocking and supply-chain problems.
The real advantage of choosing to buy from a retailer who runs an EDLP strategy is that the price of the bathroom is unlikely to change during a 12 month period. As a result, you are under no pressure to buy at a certain time because the promotion is coming to an end. You can put off your project for six months and the cost of the project is unlikely to have changed.
The retailers who follow this strategy include B&Q, Bathstore & Bathrooms.com.
Twenty years ago, almost all bathrooms sold in the UK were sold by retailers running high/low promotional pricing strategies. This is where a retailer establishes the price of a bathroom for a certain period, maybe four weeks or longer and then puts the bathroom on promotion at a discounted price for a limited period. If you want to buy the bathroom at the lower price, which can sometimes be as much as 50% or 60% below the original price, you often have only a short time to make a decision. This type of promotional activity continued for so long that as consumers, we have been brainwashed that if we're not getting a big discount, we don't want to buy and a sale shortly coming to an end, drives us to make a purchase decision.
One of the unacceptable aspects of high/low pricing occurs when retailers inflate the original price, to only bring it back down again as the “sale” or “discounted” price, which is closer to the real price of the bathroom. When the prices are reduced to the “sale” price, they often remain at the discounted level for a considerable amount of time, sometimes longer than four weeks, at which customers begin to question the validity of the reduced price.
The retailers who follow high/low promotional pricing strategies include Wickes, Victoria Plum & Victorian Plumbing.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is the self-regulatory organisation of the advertising industry in the United Kingdom. The ASA is a non-statutory organisation and so cannot interpret or enforce legislation. However, its code of advertising practice broadly reflects legislation in many instances. The ASA is not funded by the British government, but by a levy on the advertising industry.
Its role is to "regulate the content of advertisements, sales promotions and direct marketing in the UK" by investigating "complaints made about ads, sales promotions or direct marketing", and deciding whether such advertising complies with its advertising standards code.