In an effort to fight back against discount laundry detergents, Procter & Gamble is considering a budget-priced version of Tide.
Nearly half of Americans are now buying discount detergents — brands like Costco Wholesale’s Kirkland Signature and Target’s up & up, to name just two.
Procter & Gamble is reportedly considering a budget liquid detergent that would be called Tide Simple, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Several years ago, up & up HE (high efficiency) laundry detergent won the coveted Best Buy rating from Consumer Reports. It was the only detergent to do so. At that time, Target’s store brand cost 11 cents a load. Tide detergent, meanwhile, was 23 cents a load, though it only scored a little higher than up & up. So people were paying more than double the price for roughly equivalent cleaning power.
The funny thing is I read in the The Wall Street Journal article about Tide’s discount gamble. A detergent industry insider said, ‘Nobody wins a price war game.’
Huh? Talk about untrue words! If ‘nobody’ means 315 million Americans, then the sentence should read ‘Everyone wins…’