Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Will ‘Value’ be the new aid to buying excellent extra virgin olive oil?

Value is a concept developed by Savantes to give consumers a realistic appraisal of the value for money of extra virgin olive oils presented to them on retail shelves.

Confronted with a range of positive and negative publicity surrounding the quality of extra virgin olive oils and the burgeoning award medals on bottles, quality seals and proprietary campaigns promoting new classifications such as ‘Ultra Premium’, consumers are understandably confused.

Value will give extra virgin olive purchasers a simple tool which gives extra virgin olive oils an ‘Excellence Score’ based on their performance in selected international competitions.

All the customer needs to do is enter the price of the oils on the shelf and the app does the rest, dividing the ‘Excellence Score’ by the price giving the Value. The customer can then get a GOOD idea of the high quality of the extra virgin olive oils being sold at a competitive price
.
For example: To qualify an extra virgin olive oil must be entered in at least 3 of the selected competitions.

Scores given are 5 for a Gold Medal, 3 for Silver, 1 for Bronze. The three highest scores are used if more than 3 competitions are eligible.

  • EVOO 1 wins 3 gold medals and has an excellence score of 15.
  • EVOO 2 wins 2 golds and a silver and has an excellence score of 13. 
  • EVOO 3 wins 2 silvers and a bronze has an excellence score of 7. 

Once we have an excellence score we can give a Value = excellence score÷price.

If the retail price for all the products is $/€/£10 for a 500ml bottle (it doesn’t make any difference which currency is used) the ‘Values’ will be:

  • EVOO1 – 15÷10 = 1.5
  • EVOO2 – 13÷10 = 1.3
  • EVOO3 – 7÷10   = 0.7