The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s supermarket pricing litigation is now split into two tracks in the Federal Court: Coles has already been found to have misled shoppers on a sample of Down Down tickets, while judgment remains reserved in the watchdog’s near-identical case against Woolworths over Prices Dropped promotions. For Woolworths Group and Coles Group, the question is no longer whether discount signage is politically sensitive—it is whether was-now shelf tickets accurately described a genuine reduction from each product’s previous regular price.
What Coles has already lost
Justice Michael O’Bryan ruled in May that Coles engaged in misleading conduct on 13 of 14 sample Down Down tickets drawn from 245 products promoted between February 2022 and May 2023. The ACCC alleged Coles briefly lifted prices by at least 15 per cent, then ran Down Down offers that were higher than, or the same as, the price shoppers had been paying before the spike. The court accepted that ordinary consumers would read the tickets as promising a real discount from a prior regular shelf price, not from a short-lived increase.
Coles has said it disagrees with aspects of the findings and is considering its options; penalty hearings will follow. The judgment already sets a benchmark other retailers are watching: internal policies that once required 12 weeks at a higher price before a promotion were shortened in practice, and the court treated twelve weeks as the minimum that would have made many tickets truthful.
ABC’s coverage of the May ruling highlighted evidence that pricing teams internally discussed how short a reference price could be while still printing a was figure that looked credible on shelf edge labels. The ACCC’s original media release noted that both chains had kept many items at stable prices for at least 180 days before the alleged spikes, a fact pattern designed to show shoppers a familiar baseline that the promotion then betrayed.
Woolworths still before the court
Separate proceedings allege Woolworths used the same mechanics on 266 products between September 2021 and May 2023. The concise statement claims Woolworths sometimes planned a Prices Dropped run before lifting shelf prices, establishing a higher was figure that did not reflect the long-run price families had been paying. Woolworths denies misleading anyone and argues supplier cost pressure made interim price moves legitimate; during the liability hearing in April, counsel sparred with the bench over how long a was price must hold to count as regular.
The ACCC will not comment on Woolworths while judgment is reserved, but chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb has framed both cases as protecting grocery shoppers from illusory savings on essentials. Class actions mirroring the regulator’s theory are also in flight, adding a second damages clock beyond any competition penalties.
During the Woolworths hearing, the regulator used representative products such as family-size biscuit packs to show multi-week spikes followed by Prices Dropped tickets that still exceeded the long-run shelf price. Woolworths countered that supplier negotiations during inflation meant the comparison price on the ticket reflected a real interim charge, even if households mentally anchored on older numbers. Justice O’Bryan’s eventual ruling will test whether that supplier narrative defeats the consumer-law framing that won on Coles’ samples.
What the duopoly decides next
Boards at both companies must decide how aggressively to market temporary price cuts while appeals and penalties are unresolved. Analysts have already marked down earnings expectations for potential fines that could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars if the Coles precedent scales across the full product lists. More immediately, pricing teams face a compliance problem: tickets that merely compare a promotion to a recent spike, rather than to the price over a sustained period, are now legally radioactive.
The Guardian quoted former ACCC chairs arguing the Coles decision should end fake discount culture across Australian retail, not only groceries. Pharmacy, hardware and electronics chains that mimic was-now tickets face the same Australian Consumer Law tests even though they are not defendants in these proceedings. Woolworths and Coles still control roughly two-thirds of supermarket sales, so their ticketing practices set the template competitors copy.
Filings and investor read-through
Woolworths Group and Coles Group have told the ASX they are defending the ACCC actions and cooperating with the court timetable. Investors treating the grocers as defensive consumer staples are being forced to model regulatory capital at risk alongside wage, shrink and online delivery costs. Supermarket margins were already under Senate inquiry pressure over alleged price gouging; a Federal Court liability finding adds a quantifiable legal overhang distinct from political rhetoric.
For investors, the institutional story is simple: two ASX-listed retailers built brand equity on value messaging, and a federal judge has already said that messaging failed the ordinary shopper test on Coles’ sample set—with Woolworths’ Prices Dropped program still awaiting a liability ruling that could land later this year. Until then, every new promotional campaign is both a marketing decision and a discovery exhibit waiting to happen.