This Week’s on No Shit Sherlock Award goes to…

This Week’s on No Shit Sherlock Award goes to…

…the ground breaking results on shopping for groceries in the UAE that really breaks no ground

July 15, 2011 12:00 by Eva Fernandes

When it comes to stating the obvious, nothing hits the spot better than sponsored-survey. In this week’s section of No Shit Sherlocks, we bring you the findings of one Visa survey. Intrigued by the subject of the mail “Visa Reveals How Mothers in the UAE are Dealing with Increased Grocery Prices” we opened the press release to find these seminal findings:

New research from Visa reveals 9 out of 10 mums surveyed have been impacted by increased cost of groceries.
38 percent of mums polled are reducing their grocery spend as a result of the rising food costs
Visa helps relieve the pressure by offering cardholders the chance to win AED 12,000 every time they use their Visa Debit card to buy groceries

Hmm, now where in the world do we begin? How about with obvious finding #1: 9 out of 10 mums are “impacted” by the increased costs. Be still my beating heart, could it really be true that when the price of staples increases, the populous will actually be impacted by the increase? One could suppose Visa needed to conduct a online survey among a sizeable sample of 150 mothers to come to this groundbreaking revelation just to be sure of the actually figures, although we’re not quite certain what shape or form this “impact” really took.

Isn’t it just so convenient as well that Visa happens to have the antidote to “relieve” pressure on moms by giving them a chance to win Dh12,000 every time they use their Debit Card? It’s a good thing too because that just alleviates the worry moms may have about card service charges. Wait. What’s that? Those charges remain in place? Oh.

But let us not dwell on this for too long, for there are treasures aplenty in the press release. Let us take for instance Obvious Finding #1240729 which states: “And it seems that UAE mums are creatures of habit, with almost half of the respondents (49 per cent) saying that they do their grocery shopping once a week; and 80 per cent admitting to generally buying the same grocery items every time.”

Yes, apparently buying staples like bread and milk makes us creatures of habit. And yes, the horrible truth that your grocery list is pretty much the same is something one really needs to “admit to.”

There’s also the ‘half’ statistics, which always brings a happy smirk around the office. By ‘half’ statistics we mean those that say 50% or almost 50% or around 50%. If you think about it, this number doesn’t really say anything. Imagine if somebody came up to you and said ‘There’s a 50-50 chance that it’ll rain today’. See what we mean?