If you remember GroceryChoice, it was, to be honest, not a huge success. The idea was simple – provide information about supermarket prices, and people will able to shop at the cheapest supermarket in their area.
However, the usefulness of the site was limited by the fact that prices weren’t made available at a supermarket-by-supermarket level, but by “regions”, for instance “inner northern Melbourne”. However, that’s not terribly useful; it’s my recollection, for instance, that the yuppie Carlton branch of Safeway is among the most expensive supermarkets in Melbourne; the Brunswick branch about 3 kilometers away is among the cheapest.
However according to today’s Fin (not available free online), the site is about to undergo a revamp that might make it a lot more useful. And – surprise, surprise – the supermarkets are not happy.
The government has handed over the running of the site from the ACCC to CHOICE (what used to be the Australian Consumers’ Association), and they’re planning to get the supermarkets’ electronic pricing information provided to them on a weekly, supermarket-by-supermarket basis. So if the Brunswick Safeway is significantly cheaper than the Carlton one, anybody who cares will know and has, well, the choice to shop at the cheaper location.
Unsurprisingly, the supermarkets have discovered all sorts of reasons why their electronic systems can’t provide this information. Frankly, it smells like a fairly weak excuse – if they can’t get pricing information out of their systems with a simple database query, how the hell do they run their supermarkets?
In any case, if this comes to pass, GroceryChoice will actually have some teeth.
This change sounds really good. I hope they succeed in getting the information. I don’t see why they couldn’t get daily updates if they wanted to. I’m sure the supermarkets don’t want it so clearly revealed how they charge more for the same product in richer areas than poorer areas (sometimes with good reasons such as higher real estate costs).
Apparently there’s a new ceo at Choice who is a real firebrand.
THe next step is for Grocery Watch (and Fuel watch) to provide the data straight into WhereIs and the other GPS data providers. Especially the ones available on G3 phones.
Tha should open up a bit more immediate competetion, as well as provide a bit of incentive for people to actually visit the sites.
And it’ll be helpful for those of us who get the traditional late afternoon phone call for bread, milk and a bottle of wine, and then get berated on reaching home for getting the wrong sort or the expensive brand.
“I’m sure the supermarkets don’t want it so clearly revealed how they charge more for the same product in richer areas than poorer areas..”
All may be revealed. It might actually be the opposite to your conclusion if my experience is anything to go by. I notice in a poorer suburb near me, where the local independent has a monopoly, that the general day to day prices are much more expensive than the in-town coles. Those without a car are caught without much choice.
Choice has certain categories that are ‘pay for access’ or ‘members only’. I don’t suppose that this will the case in publicising GroceryChoice. They must anticipate the hits for this information will offer them some great internet advertising potential IF it is a success. I once went for a job at the old ACC, now Choice. It could have changed my life. Just wondering.
“Grocery Choice” would be the ultimate in nanny state stupidity, and should have been top of the list on the “What should get canned in the Budget?” post. Ad seriously, if you can afford a 3G phone, you are hardly going to slide into poverty by paying 20c more for a dozen eggs and a carton of milk.
It amazes me that anyone would think it is a good use of taxpayers’ money to tell you whether fresh avocadoes ar cheaper at Coles, Woolworths or Aldi this week, and suggests a deeply pessimistic view of the capacity of people to learn things (like where cheaper groceries are).
Sounds excellent. Ideally from a phone or machine-manipulable (how long until we can put in a grocery list and get a best price including public transport fares?)
The supermarkets might genuinely struggle a bit because many of them have IT systems that are as cheap as possible while not actually failing in any important way. I have worked for a company that struggled with this issue. It’s not insurmountable, but it is a bit ugly.
The other thing is what counts as comparable, and how easy it is to specify. Organic free range eggs, for instance, cannot be replaced by imported battery farmed ones but people do try. it’s trickier with (say) garlic, where legally Chinese garlic is just like Mexican garlic despite the difference in pesticide use.
I’m not convinced GroceryChoice (or the stilborn FuelWatch, for that matter) are that worthwhile either, to be honest. But if the government’s going to spend the money to fund GroceryChoice, it should be an actually useful service, rather than the useless stunt it currently forms.
Robert, it may be that I’ve just been in China, and the idea there that governments should develop a web site to help Beijingers find a bargain would send people into paroxyms of laughter. Maybe its symptomatic of a small country that we feel there is a need for government to teach us how to shop better.
Or maybe the whole thing is a stunt and should be quietly scrapped. We know enough about the relationship between income, education and Internet use to know that if poor people are getting ripped off on their groceries, a Web site is the last thing that is going to stop this from happening.
I fear the spectacle of people in their Toyota Priuses hooning around from Brunswick to Frankston armed with iPhones and SatNavs in search of the cheapest Mexican garlic, furnished by a taxpayer-funded Web site.
Don’t the store operators, whether you are a one man band or a global chain, have the right to keep their own pricing data private?
Isn’t how they disseminate that information up to them?
In a word, Razor, no. There’s no divine right to keep your pricing data private.
The utility of the program aside, I’ve worked in supermarkets and I know its not too difficult to query and supply that data*. However, ticketing is done more often than once a week (usually 2-3 times for the main part of the store, in my experience), and different sections of a store are updated at different times, too. The amount of data management required to render all that incoming data comparable and user-friendly (labels for products are often heavily abbreviated, for instance, and each company will have different inventory numbers for each product) in a timely fashion will not come cheap – and in fact, I don’t think it will be done well at all. The system will inevitably be laggy and hard to interpret, especially for those who need it most. The advent of unit pricing will help, but not enough. Its just a money-pit.
*for most people. I’m barely supressing the urge to make a snarky comment about the intelligence of many supermarket managers at this point. Holding back valiantly…
brettc @ 3 – I think exactly how useful it is will depend a bit on how granular the data published is. Shopping basket comparisons are not that useful, but individual item comparisons are (if they are the items you are interested in).
joe2 @4 – that may well be the case in the circumstances you describe. I was more thinking of comparisons between two stores with the same owner. I know of two Coles stores about a 10-15 minute drive apart which have noticeably different prices. Its not something I expected and didn’t notice until I moved.
Grumphy, and companies like Neilsen have a lot of IP tied up in untangling those abbreviations. Just knowing that “Cok600/t/sf/chil” is the same as “600ml CokaCola traditional sugarfree refrigerated” is not too bad, it’s when you have a list of the 200,000 plus product names from all supermarkets combined and want to know which refer to the same products that it gets exciting (IIRC Aldi do 20k-30k products/store, other supermarkets do 50-60k, smaller supermarkets do a partially intersecting 100-10k). FWIW, chilled and nonchilled versions of the same product are often not comparable, someone has to pay for the chilling.
This is stuff that it’s not practical for the average punter to find out even once, let alone every week. Sure, going through the ads and working out who has the best specials in a given week is easy enough. So is visiting five or ten supermarkets one week to see who has the best “basket prices”. Doing that every single week would take a long time and probably get you banned from some supermarkets (they take offence at people recording their pricing).
moz, I just bought some groceries this evening and at the checkout each time an item was scanned I could see it being added to the list of items, along with its price. The information is in the system, it’s just a matter of ensuring its accessible to the people.
The change that I found really useful is the one where they have to display the price of (say) cereal in $ per 100 grams or whatever. This is really handy when you can see how buying different sizes and different brands but you can compare what you are really getting for your money.
Despis, the problem is not “I have this item, how much is it”, but “I want milk, who sells it and for how much?” Working backwards is often a lot more difficult than forwards. In the “600ml of regular coke” example it seems easy because it’s one product with only a few UPCs and hopefully only a few ways to describe it (about 20, last time I looked). It’s great if the supermarkets supply the UPC, but not all do. Making that mandatory would be kinda useful, but you still need the description because UPC is only 13 digits and there are “free” ones for small suppliers to use… Safeway Brunswick might have UPC 123456789012 as “organic goat milk yogurt 250g” while Carton Safeway has it as “day old bread, white, toast, house brand” (or worse, “goats milk yoghurt, organic (250g)”). Getting a computer to make sense of all that is not trivial. If that doesn’t make sense to you either, QED.
But think about milk… there are multiple suppliers of “the same” product with various packaging and sizing options even without taking into account the different products (is calcium enriched skim milk the same as trim milk with vitamin d?) or expiry dates (if it’s two days older and 50c cheaper is that a bargain?) So if you say “I want a two litre bottle of milk” I’m going to get a list back, not a straight price comparison between identical products.
Moz: “knowing that “Cok600/t/sf/chil” is the same as “600ml CokaCola traditional sugarfree refrigerated” is not too bad, it’s when you have a list of the 200,000 plus product names from all supermarkets combined and want to know which refer to the same products that it gets exciting ”
Desipis: “I just bought some groceries this evening and at the checkout each time an item was scanned I could see it being added to the list of items, along with its price. The information is in the system, it’s just a matter of ensuring its accessible to the people.”
Ooooh, database copyright! Robert’s right that supermarket pricing data is not private, nor copyrightable *but* the organisation of data (eg the whitepages or TV guides) *is* copyrightable in Australia, so the public (and Choice) have no ‘right’ to access it.
I wonder who owns these tables and what their license terms are…
d
Hey, I shop at that yuppie supermarket! Maybe I’ll go check out Brunswick instead. Thanks for the tip off, Rob.
Andos: it was true years ago. Don’t know whether it still is. Brunswick has yuppified quite a lot, you know – I live within a kilometer of at least a dozen joints who get stars in the Age Cheap Eats guide
Darryl @ 18 – I think the best outcome would be if the information could be in the public domain. That would leave it open for third parties to come in and offer services like being able to enter the list of items which you want and return recommendations on where you should go. They can look after creating a nice easy to use interface for the masses.
The practical value of the scheme is zero. Who is disciplined enough to make a comprehensive shopping list in advance and then laboriously calculate alternative costs, even if the like-with-like problems can be overcome? Nobody I know.
However some of the vocal opponents of the scheme would do well to reflect upon the implications for their pet obsession that markets are always and inevitably in the interests of all parties. Attacking Grocery Watch on the grounds that it is impossible to make meaningful price comparisons kind of destroys the myth that consumers are all informed economic agents busily trying to maximise the marginal utility of every last dollar on their debit card.
Perhaps the newly unemployed in a budget crunch will have the time? Though it doesn’t need to be laboriously difficult. Back when I was in the woolworths home shop delivery area we had an electronic shopping list stored on the website of things we bought. It was very easy and fast to select the items we needed for the next delivery.
Its not hard to imagine a website where you can store items you commonly buy and the website calculates for you the cheapest places to visit for what you’re about to go out and get. I know lots of people who store their shopping lists on pdas/phones and this would just be a natural extension of that.
Robert, I assume from your response to me that there is some legal basis to forcing a business to reveal it’s prices. If this is not the case then how would they be forced to reveal this information?
“Hey, I shop at that yuppie supermarket! Maybe I’ll go check out Brunswick instead. Thanks for the tip off, Rob.”
Still broadly true, but don’t bother with Barkly Square Safeway (or “Ghost Mart” as I call it) because it has very few products. The one on Albert St on the train line is better.
Don’t the store operators, whether you are a one man band or a global chain, have the right to keep their own pricing data private?
Isn’t how they disseminate that information up to them?
If prices are difficult or impossible to compare, the whole basis of the “free market” capitalist system is completely lost.
Exactly Helen, it’s the point I tried to make earlier. People who say it’s impossible or too hard to provide price information to participants in a market are exposing all the arguments in favour of unregulated markets as the ideological bulldust they truly are.
Razor @24, supermarket prices are public knowledge. They are displayed on the goods or the shelves where the goods sit.
Sssh! Don’t give the game away!!
Sam – I know that. How are you going to get them from the price tag to website? Either the company provides a file of some sort or someone needs to go and record prices. What is the solution? Will the businesses be coerced if they wont volunteer the information freely?
Ken – the only place truely free markets exist is in theory. All markets operate by some rules. Not enough rules – no good. Too many rules – no good. Where is the balance? Trial and error.
“How are you going to get them from the price tag to website?”
They are all barcoded these days. Shouldn’t be too hard, but I’m no IT expert.
barcode only works if you have their pricing data – which is th efile you actually want (but might not get voluntarily).
Except it isn’t. The whole basis of “free market” capitalism is private property and voluntary exchange. Price is a signaling mechanism only.
I would like to see the system that has operated in NZ for at least 12 years: proper unit pricing. For each item, you can read on the price ticket how much it costs per gm, ml, or other convenient measure, as well as the shelf price. That means you can tell at a glance which product is the cheapest without doing the arithmetic on differently-sized offerings while you keep an eye on the toddler and prevent the baby falling out of the trolley. Also, supermarkets in NZ have the option of hand scanners that you can use as you go round, handing the scanner over at the checkout, and having the total calculated immediately. Spot checks are done to make sure people aren’t cheating, but this system has been in use for at least 8 years, so I guess the supermarkets don’t feel they are losing money by having it. With these two time-saving measures I have found NZ supermarket shopping to be generally a much more pleasant experience than it is in Sydney.
M-H@34: in Melbun we have the “self check-out” appearing in some places where you dump your stuff on the machine, scan it all yourself, then the machine objects and you have to wait for a staff member to come over and sort it out. There’s a scale on each side of the scanner, and the theory is that you buy one bag of groceries at a time and do not use the green bags (they’re too heavy, so they count as “please scan all items before paying”), and not more than you can fit on the scales. Sort of works for a small inner-city supermarket but less useful for people buying more than a few items.
Sam @ 28: they’re public in exactly the same sense as your credit card details are… they’re held on private premises that used commercially.
Sam @31: I’m an IT worker who has worked in this area. See my comments above, it’s not as easy as it looks. Can be done, but who pays?
Moz, the systems I’ve used in NZ aren’t like this – I’ve heard about these diabolical self checkout systems in Brisbane where my partner’s 89-yr-old mother can’t lift her groceries high enough to use the machine. The NZ one is very efficient and I really don’t know why it hasn’t been adopted here. You scan the items as you pick them up – you can put them into green bags of boxes or whatever you want as you go round – and a staff member takes your scanner at the checkout, uploads it to the till, and you’re gone.
M-H, yeah, I’ve seen the NZ ones in action and it’s a great idea.
How do those kiwis deal with items that do not have a barcode like grapes?
BigW have the “self checkout”, where I am, that works ok once a teenager has shown you how to use it. It beats waiting half an hour for the scarce checkout chicks.
Great to see that ‘Grocery Choice’ has been abandoned. Pity about the millions wasted but thats socialism for you I guess. A fairly cheap lesson learnt. Fairly damning in my opinion is the following, from Dr. Emerson:
In other words, the perceived lack of competition is heavily due to f’ing government policy in the first place. So typical.
GroceryChoice collapsed because the capitalist duopoly of Woolworths and Coles refused to provide information about comparative prices to Choice/the Government, because the retailers wanted to exploit hapless consumers with their rip-off prices, who, safter all have to eat to live.
That’s capitalism for you Peter. It wouldn’t be allowed to happen if our government was socialist, believe me!
Paul: good-quality food is not something that socialist governments have exactly been reknowned for delivering.
GroceryChoice would have provided a useful consumer measure if the government had been able to hold it’s nerve and let Choice get on with the job it had stuffed up, initially.
FuelChoice would ,likewise, have provided the consumer with valuable information had it not been, possibly, white anted by an ant working within the public service whose sympathy was to the Liberal Party and Big Oil.
Depends which socialist govt you’re talking about, Robert. Also depends on whether you’d even concede there’s ever been a socialist govt (as opposed to a centrally controlled economy). I’m not sure I would.
Paul Burns
Um as I was saying..
In regards to the ‘ capitalist duopoly of Woolworths and Coles’ what part of:
and
don’t you understand??
Both Cuba and Venezuela are renowned for their great supermarkets, or so I’ve heard. I believe Venezuelas thug-in-chief recently took over many of the rice mills to ensure there was none of the profiteering Paul Burns bleats about.
Ssshhhhh !!
Hush everyone, if youse keep saying how wonderful this idea is, someone might pull the plug on it !!!!
Peter,
At least Chavez isn’t selling Venezuela down the drain the way Howard sold us down the drain with the US Aust. free trade agreement.That;s my first and last comment on the issue Peter. So don’t bother taking me up on it. I won’t respond.
I dunno, MUSU was dominated by the hard left in the mid 1990s. The MUSU-run catering outlets were uniformly awful, despite considerable subsidy
This is false consciousness on your part, Robert. Edible food is a bourgeois affectation and your expectation of it indicates Rightist (indeed Bukharinite) deviationism from achieving the revolutionary goal of a socialist paradise of uniformly awful food.