Everybody loves a good bargain, which is why the red tops are stuffed full of adverts – for 49p cucumbers, half-price breakfast biscuits, 32-pack boxes of crisps, yoghurts, milk, bananas etc etc. The pages of The Sun, The Mirror and The Daily Mail are positively bursting with evidence of the price war.

So imagine a supermarket where absolutely everything was given away for free. Implausible? Maybe, but there’s one called Freemarket opening in Copenhagen this Saturday.

The idea – which the organisers claim is a ‘world first’ (though a quick Google search reveals a few similar ideas exist) – is to create a cashless supermarket space where consumers sign up online, pay a nominal monthly subscription fee (around £2) and then get 10 free products each month. The shopper gets an online profile and as payment in kind they must share their experience by writing a review. They’re given a deadline by which to submit it, otherwise the account is closed and they risk facing a penalty.

The concept of Freemarket is based on ‘tryvertising’ – marketing products by giving them away for free (in a slightly more sophisticated way than just dishing out samples). It’s a buzzword for an established concept already used widely in various guises – think restaurant reviewers who get a free meal in return, or free Graze snack boxes in return for your details.

Brands have been using ‘tryvertising’ for years, according to PR blogger Kim Harrison, who cites examples of car manufacturers such as Mercedes and Mini Cooper partnering with luxury hotels to supply their cars to hotel guests with unlimited mileage and fuel; and coffee brands in the Netherlands that give away freshly brewed coffee at bus and tram stops – a much more engaging way of marketing the product than just sticking it on a billboard.

Freemarket describes itself as a “marketing channel” and says its aim is to “create dialogue” between consumer and producer. It may sound more like a mega market research project than a genuine supermarket, but the aim is, according founder Simon Taylor, to use that feedback to “influence what is going on the shelves of supermarkets of the future”. And that’s where the value lies for suppliers.

Whether or not shoppers will think 10 free products a month is enough of a bargain to lure them into the store and write a review for each one is an open question… If it were me, I might do it once. But then again I might just forfeit the freebies and head to my local shop instead. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, after all.

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