Ad description
A website for Victoria Plum, www.victoriaplum.co.uk, appearing in January 2022, featured text stating “The UK’s largest online only bathroom retailer”.
Issue
Victorian Plumbing, who believed they were the largest online bathroom retailer, challenged whether the claim “The UK’s largest online only bathroom retailer” was misleading and could be substantiated.
Response
Victoria Plum said that their claim was valid and unambiguous and when making the claim, they relied on the universal acceptance that online-only referred to companies that did not have any physical showroom presence. They said they had no showrooms, offline retail outlets, or any physical outlets where their products could be viewed. Their customers could not obtain advice from any in-store customer advisors and customers could not collect purchases from an outlet. They compared this to Victorian Plumbing whose website provided details of a physical showroom, which was a transactional store open six days a week, which they considered meant they could not claim to be an online-only retailer.
They said that market research firm Mintel’s report “Bathrooms and Bathroom accessories UK, 2022” showed the revenues of bathroom market retailers and thatdisregarding those that had physical retails stores, the report showed that of the three largest online only retailers, Victoria Plum, Better Bathrooms and Plumbworld, Victoria Plum had the highest turnover in 2021. They said that there were other retailers who sold bathrooms, but their reported sales often included sales from other categories and they also all had physical retail outlets.
Assessment
Not upheld
The ASA considered that consumers would understand from the claim “The UK’s largest online only bathroom retailer” that Victoria Plum had the largest market share in terms of sales when compared with other bathroom retailers that traded online exclusively. We considered consumers would interpret ‘online-only’ to mean that an online retailer did not have any physical stores where they could undertake a financial transaction.
The complainant contended that they were themselves the largest online bathroom retailer, and on that basis they believed it was misleading for the ad to claim that the advertiser was the “UK’s largest online only bathroom retailer". However we noted that the complainant did have a showroom where consumers could browse, obtain advice, and purchase products. We considered, therefore, that they were not directly comparable in terms of being exclusively ‘online-only’ as it would be understood by consumers, and that their claim to be the largest online bathroom retailer did not undermine the claim in the ad.
The advertiser was nevertheless required to substantiate the claim, and we expected to see evidence to demonstrate that they were the UK’s largest online-only bathroom retailer. We assessed the Mintel report “Bathrooms and Bathroom Accessories UK 2022” and acknowledged that the complainant did have a larger market share than Victoria Plum, and that both retailers had been categorised similarly as ‘internet-based’. As above, however, the complainant had a physical store, and while it was categorised as internet-based, it was therefore not ‘online-only’. Victoria Plum held the biggest market share of the remaining retailers in that category, and given that ‘internet-based’ would include online-only retailers, we considered the report showed that they were the largest online-only bathroom retailer.
We therefore concluded that Victoria Plum’s claim to be “the UK’s largest online-only bathroom retailer” had been substantiated and was unlikely to mislead.
We investigated the claim under CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation) and 3.33 (Comparisons with identifiable competitors), but did not find it in breach.
Action
No further action necessary.
