The Queen’s new business venture – the Windsor Farm Shop – sells and prices loose goods exclusively in metric. I spoke to the manager, a former executive of M&S, and he said that in the seven days the shop had been open, I was the first and only person to complain. The phone number, for anyone else interested in having a word, is 01753 623 800, and the website is www.windsorfarmshop.co.uk

Below is the text of an email I sent:

Dear Sir,

Visiting your otherwise excellent new Royal Farm shop today, I was very surprised to see that you have an unusually strict policy of labelling your goods strictly in metric units only.

In this policy you are some way away from the ‘mainstream’ dual-units policy used by all of the major supermarket chains; and, with the move by the Tesco chain, amongst others, towards increasing the prominence given to UK units in loose-goods labelling, you appear to be moving against the tide of current practice.

None of this would matter, of course, if it were what your customers wanted. The ‘Big Four’ use dual marking not to make things more difficult for themselves, or out of any sense of innate conservatism, but because they have done their research, and discovered that this is what their customers want.

You may think otherwise. You may think that your customers are more metric-friendly, even though they appear to be on average somewhat more elderly than the typical Tesco or Sainsbury shopper. In your first week of trading, you say, no-one at all mentioned any difficulty in understanding the metric measures (although, I must say, on the basis of all of about twenty minutes’ observation, there did seem to be a lot of "A smallish bit…no, a bit bigger than that…yes, that’s about it," and "About five or six slices." – the sort of thing you do when you’re not wholly confident with your grasp of the measures but too polite or embarrassed to say). Whatever. But it just so happens that I have recently completed compiling a comprehensive survey of all of the independent market research on the subject of weights and measures carried out in this country in the past five years, covering many thousands of people in every part of the country, of all ages and both sexes.

I attach an email copy. In a nutshell, though, the research shows that around three quarters of the entire UK public, young and old, think in UK units; and the figure is even higher amongst the over-50 age group so much in evidence amongst the customers of your shop. More than this, a significant proportion, in research, prove unable to accurately judge quantity in metric weights. Only 28% of the public, for example, can correctly guess the typical number of average-sized apples in a kilo.

So what I would like to ask is not that you change your metric weighing or pricing policy, but that you consider showing the equivalent prices per pound as well, in the same way that all the major supermarkets and just about every other retailer in the country do.

Also, you might even consider doing a quick bit of market research yourself: just type out a piece of paper with the following question on:

"To help us serve you better, how would you like us to price our loose foods?":
(a) price per kilo/100g only
(b) price per kilo/100g and price per pound/quarter



Yours sincerely,

Mr W. Cairns

No response yet to my previous message. Sent a chaser:

Dear Mr Britain, a quick note to check that you received the opinion poll research report I sent you, and to see whether you have given any consideration - in the light of the findings - to revising your rather extreme 'metric-only' signage policy in the shop to a more mainstream 'dual units' policy in line with the current practice in most UK supermarkets.

With best wishes

Warwick Cairns

Still no reply from the manager, but when I went in at the weekend, I noticed that about a half to two thirds of the loose goods tickets now shoe the price per pound, albeit in a smaller typeface underneath the metric.

It could well be that your efforts have paid off. Let us know the reply you get from the manager - it will be interesting to see what he says.