Kevin, 
Please help me to understand your comment from an accounting point of view.
The large supermarkets are listed companies whose financial results and position are externally audited by a SAICA accredited auditing firm, probably one of the big 4.

How can the audited nett profit margins actually be higher than published and signed off by the auditors?
Are you implying that the marketing and advertising costs in the income statement were not actually incurred, and are just a book entry that the auditors misssed, meaning that in actual fact the nett profit was higher?
If this is your theory, how did the auditors not pick it up when reconciling the income statement to the cashflow statement, not to mention when checking creditor payments and doing bank reconciliations?

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