The first incarnation of GroceryChoice was pretty useless, but GroceryChoice Mk II would have been a big improvement. So what prompted Craig Emerson to kill it, a few days before launch?
Emerson’s media release claims that it wouldn’t work, because supermarkets change their pricing information too often to keep such a website accurate.
It doesn’t make sense to me. The supermarkets have to keep their price databases updated as soon as they change the price, to allow their cash registers to charge customers the current price of every item. If that information is in a database at the store level, in principle there’s little difference in the difficulty of transferring that information to GroceryChoice on a daily or weekly basis, or do it live or semi-live.
The alternative theory is that Woolworths and Coles wanted it killed. But that doesn’t make a huge amount of sense either – they’ve got the lowest costs of any of the full-range supermarkets, and their IT systems are most likely to be the easiest to set up to provide the pricing information wanted by GroceryChoice. It’s the independents who probably had most to lose, with the highest costs to provide the information and the likelihood that their prices would be the highest.
So we’re back to the original question? On whose behest, and why, was GroceryChoice quietly killed off on a day where Michael Jackson’s death wiped most other things off the media agenda?
UPDATE: Thanks to Addo in comments, the SMH has more info. It seems clear from the story that Woolies and Coles wanted it killed. I still reckon their reasons why don’t stack up.
A slightly more detailed story on how the whole thing came apart can be found in the SMH, here.
I know this is extremely unlikely, but wouldn’t it be great if Emerson just realised it was an incredibly stupid waste of our money and ended it on grounds of good public administration.
Robert, I think the problem is that the Choice-run scheme would have shown too clearly how the two big supermarket chains have wide (and unjustifiable) pricing variations for the same items in different stores, depending on location.
Just transplant the film industry’s approach to its own sector and dish out tax breaks to all the other Aldis waiting to enter our market. It’ll work better for my basket than it ever has or will for film professionals.
Ken#2, I hope you’re right.
As an orchardist producing fruit for the domestic market, any mention of ‘keeping prices down’ gets my jaw grinding and fists clenching.
Both Labour and Liberal governments have been responsible for free market and deregulation policies which have killed Australian wealth and job creating businesses in the growing and processing of food sector.
Growers and processors, who had little power in the marketplace anyway, and were still subject to the weather and the ever shifting market, found themselves, under said policies, with the power balance shifted even further away from them and towards the big supermarkets. Sleazily, the supermarkets were able to pit grower against grower now that compulsory membership of grower organisations was illegal.
Did this benefit the Australian consumer? Well, they did say it would reduce prices. They didn’t say you would get massive decline and job losses from rural Australia. They didn’t say that to increase our exports we would have to open our doors and increase our imports of foods of dubious standards produced by worse than dubious wage, hygiene and chemical safety standards.
They didn’t say that the free trade agreements meant a slackening of quarantine service and inspection posing major biosecurity risks.
They didn’t say it would be harder and harder to identify Australian products let alone find them on the supermarket shelves. They didn’t say that even trusted and iconic Aussie brands would be bought out by overseas companies and so injecting another level of uncertainty and stress in our lives.
They didn’t say the supermarkets would be able to stock more and more food which was bad for our health because of the overwhelming mechanism driving prices down instead of maintaining quality.
Supermarkets are tricky, mean and ruthless. The two major parties are complicit in the current structure of the market and grocery watch was never going to achieve what needs to be done for consumers who want peace of mind. You can’t have peace of mind when you suspect someone in the supply chain has been ripped off or you don’t trust the product for other reasons.
Why can’t Choice (or hell, even LP) run it anyway – a mass Web 2.0 site driven by consumers, with corporates allowed to enter information but with some penalty for misleading, e.g.:
etc.
I killed GroceryChoice, and so did you – through apathy. Most people thought it was always going to be bullshit and turns out this was true.
The most comprehensive way to solve this problem would be to
1) force retailers to include a distribution chart of how much money goes where (who and location) on each price docket. Let consumers do the comparing and it’ll be a comparison that is a lot more useful than a simple price comparison.
2) once this system is up and running introduce a complete separate reportage system (paid for by the government) whereby this information is sent to a governmental authority.
3) responsibility for representing the distribution of capital would begin with the primary producers and on it goes.
Facts regarding waste, price fixing, etc would therefore be relatively easily derived from the statistics.
The easiest way to introduce the web 2.0 thing is to link the barcode of every item sold in the major retailers with a wiki based database outlining who gets what, where it is made/grown, environmental impacts, etc. all accessible via mobile phone based barcode scanners. iPhone app anyone? I raised this with some students ina cosnumer culture unit second semester last year as a thought experiment, but the technology is actually there to do this.
It was a bandaid anyway. Capitalism, free markets etc – why are people surprised when the companies charge the maximum price the market can bare? The cure for this is competition and deregulation. If I hear another story of some grower ’suffering’ because of deregulation and open markets I’ll spew because the writing has been on the wall since naught. Compulsory membership of grower organisations? Give me a break. Like it or not free trade is the order of the day and tariffs and subsidies have no place in it. If they’re having trouble competing in the local market then they’ll drown in the international markets.
Think globally. What gives anyone the right to say that the third world can continue starving while the rest continue living in excess?
I agree on the quality issues, what can be done to guarantee high product standards?
Drought and other natural disasters? No worries, lets do whatever it takes to get things back on track. Can’t fathom life without handouts, artificial markets and monopolisation? Sell to someone who’s willing or smarten up and compete.
Think I’m a prick? I voted labor and I support the farmers. I wished things stayed the way they were too.
and to cap it all off, Woolies and Coles are shite in any case. Supermarkets in the UK aren’t exactly warm and fuzzy but at least there is enough real competition so that prices are low and the choice is excellent. We really are dudded by Coles and Woolies duopoly here (and it is a duopoly no matter their attempts to paint it differently).
I loathe shopping at either but where I live you don’t really have a viable alternative.
Shame about Grocery watch, and what JohnL said at 3
So who killed GroceryChoice?
Er, the Grocery Grinch?
So who killed GroceryChoice?
Er, the Grocery Grinch?
I think JohnL @3 has it right – its not that Coles and Woolworths are concerned with GroceryWatch impacting competition with the independents or even each other. Its that Coles don’t want their stores competing with each other and Woolworths don’t want it happening to theirs either.
One interesting point about the supermarkets not being able to release pricing information – if you buy online from them (and they home deliver) the prices are all available immediately. I haven’t checked but I’d guess that prices are different depending on where they deliver (not just the delivery fee).
I really don’t understand what ‘problem’ people want to solve. We have an IGA supermarket near here and their prices are outrageous compared to the big two. There’s also an Aldi within easy driving distance – it’s quite cheap, but has a limited range and quality. It never seems to have many customers.
There used to be a Safeways too – they went broke for lack of customers and no, it wasn’t because the big two engaged in ruthless price-cutting. Safeways was cheaper and recognised as such. People just didn’t like having to run an obstacle course around cartons spilling over the aisles. I found the rat under the check-out a bit off-putting too but maybe that was just me. The checkout operator didn’t seem to mind it.
What exactly are the complaints? That Woolies and Coles are making super profits? Where’s the evidence for that? That they charge different prices at different stores? Bloody hell, if they charged the same prices everywhere people would be screaming about how unfair it was.
The ACA has been offering consumers advice to help them make informed buying decisions for nearly 50 years. It costs about $80 a year to be a member. So far, about 1% of the population has joined, which I think is a pretty good indication of the interest Australians have in this kind of analytical shopping.
My local Coles is open from 7am to 12 midnight, 7 days a week. It home delivers, even booze. It is the dogs bollocks. Some people really need to get a life.
Coles Rules, OK!?
My local Coles is open from 7am to 12 midnight, 7 days a week. It home delivers, even booze. It is the dogs bollocks. Some people really need to get a life.
Coles Rules, OK!?
Maybe they didn’t want us knowing how often they put the prices up?
This was always a b.s. scheme that had the virtue of sounding like “doing something” when in Opposition, but which Emerson is absolutely right to kill off. It would never have benefited the most disadvantaged in the community, since they do not use the Internet for purchasing decisions. It would have been a cumbersome, costly and error-prone exercise in enabling a small number of middle class consumers to save $1 on a dozen avocadoes while driving around the suburbs consuming as much in fossil fuels as they were saving on groceries.
Kudos to Emerson for putting this meaningless piece of populist dirigisme out of its misery.
Salient @ 5: It seems to me the best option for both the producer and the consumer is to avoid, as much as possible, these hyporcritical, thieviing B’s. The growth of markets where the farmer and the customer face each other across the table is both an enjoyable and financially beneficial outcome for all concerned. Of course, one of the big hitches is where are you in relation to the comsumer, and how widespread your range of crops are. Issues you already address through your current business plans no doubt.
But this is one of the best options and / or trading with a direct marketing outfit, and both these options are going through a massive increase.
If you don’t believe me, take a walk around somewhere like Northey Street (Brisbane) market on a sunday morning.
In England it has been the biggest change in consumer buying habits over the past 8 years with Farmer’s Market organisations promoting themselves and setting up throughout the country.
You didn’t mention one of the other crucifying features of supermarket trading – the payment schedule.
As I understand it, growers can wait up to 120 days for payment, whereas at least one of the chains has often boasted it’s fresh fruit and vegies are less than 7 days old by the time they are sold (give or take a season in the cold rooms?!). In my maths this gives the chain up to 113 days playing with your money. Fair and reasonable? – only if you’re a thief, a rogue, and a liar.
Agri-business is one of the world’s worst sources of pollution, destruction of habitat and despoilation of fresh water. It plays a very minimal part of my life and I can’t see it as part of a brave new world of reducing green house gases, and all the rest of the appalling habits we currently think we can get away with in this small and deteriorating planet.
Walk away from them mate – like so many of the rest of us.
There might be a comparative handful of individuals who can legitimately claim agri-business plays ‘a very minimal part’ in their lives but to imply that everyone else should do likewise is totally unrealistic. Industrialised production of corn, sugar, wheat, oils, soybeans, rice, pork, coffee, chicken and so on is absolutely fundamental to feeding the world’s population. To suggest that everyone should start dealing with farmers direct also ignores the reasons why supermarkets dominate retailing to the extent they do: people prefer them to the local butchers and greengrocers and fish shops and so on that actually used to offer diversity and choice.
Most of the discussion seems to centre on perishables but of course they do not constitute the bulk of a supermarket’s products and they are also the products where some competition remains from specialist retailers. Around my suburban area I have no problem finding alternative retailers of meat and fish and fruit and vegetables, if I’m in the mood to look for them.
But most food products are processed and packaged and therefore subject to massive economies of scale in their production, distribution and marketing. Bread and breakfast cereals and pet food and confectionery and muesli bars and Chicken Tonite and canned salmon and all the other stuff filling the aisles at Woolies and Coles is made possible by agri-businesses that in turn can only be managed by huge organisations. To suggest otherwise is to drift into dreamland.
When I’m in the Philippines I love to go to the local fish market and buy live tilapia, netted from the tank, for $2 a kilo. But if the 13 million other residents of Manila also decided to turn up to buy a few, there might be some slight logistical problems.
I had to laugh when a representative of the retailers said that the prices were already transparent and available to all…on the store shelves.
Of course they didn’t want this to happen, once the consumer is in one store their buying decision is already made. After all going to a second supermarket, checking the prices and coming back would cost the consumer more in gas and time.
Besides, if you want to get kicked out of a supermarket quickly walk around with a pad taking down prices.
I had a friend who worked for (a big chain of supermarkets) in the fruit section. He had the shit job of going to the nearby local fruit market every day to take note of their fruit and veg prices so the big store could undercut.
After the fruit market tweaked they used to chase him out of the store threatening physical violence.
As for the poor farmers suffering under such a scheme, talk to any farmer about how the big chains are screwing them. If Coles or Woolies try to run the arguement that they had a win for the farmers of Australia I’ll puke.
On the upside Turnbull et al can now plough into Rudd for “betraying the people of Australia.” I have a feeling that this will do Rudd some massive damage as it’s already being played in the media as him caving under the pressure of the big two. The irony of course being the Coalition would have had the same result.
Mervyn#17, you’ve summed up perfectly where I’m coming from. It’s ridiculous to be sending goods from one end of the planet to the other, wasting resources, polluting and destroying livelihoods. Much of it is unnecessary.
Most of the processed foods have high levels of sugar, salt, fat and other preservatives and are a major contributor to obesity.
One of my crops is sold entirely to private customers and a fruiterer. It’s too difficult to do the same with all of my dried apricots unfortunately.
Ken said “Industrialised production of corn, sugar, wheat, oils, soybeans, rice, pork, coffee, chicken and so on is absolutely fundamental to feeding the world’s population.” It’s also the enabler of the Human plague.
ben #8 you should have gone to bed before you got so irritable causing you to make many erroneous assumptions. None of it is worth commenting on however.
Judging by Salient Greens comment:
I reckon he should change his name to Soylent Green.
Tssk seems to forget that most people grocery shop about once a week so his assertion that you have to run around checking prices all the time is silly. Most people don’t shop just on price. Most people I know shop at the same supermarket year after year and convenience is way more important than price. If my groceries cost $5 more than up the road – I mean seriously, who cares? The cost of a basket of the basics, as a percentage of take home wage, has declined enormously over the last 50 years, so to make such a fuss is borderline ridiculous.
If I were to have a punt, I suspect Woolies and Coles are probably cheapest in…you guessed it…the most price-sensitive suburbs, and dearest in wealthy suburbs and rural areas where one or the other has a local monopoly. The offerings and layouts of the stores certainly vary a bit.
One effect a full-blown GroceryChoice might have had would be to level out some of these differences in price. While it might have been popular in marginal seats, it probably would have hit the least well-off.
In the USA, there are a lot more supermarket chains, and they segregate themselves according to demographic a lot more. In wealthier parts of the Bay Area, it’s either Whole Foods or Nob Hill foods, which have organic/local/fresh/premium/hand-raised stuff to the nth degree. But you pay through the nose for it.
As for farmers, clearly somebody makes money selling to Coles and Woolies or they wouldn’t be able to source produce for their stores.
Y’know. I’ve got this really great Grocery Choices system.
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It’s called the Queen Victoria Markets. There’s no need for some Technocratic Surveillance and Control apparatus. All you need is a hundred people selling the same thing, yelling out their prices and hating each others’ guts. It not only makes them competitive, it makes every green grocer and BastardoCorp superstore within 5 klicks behave.
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Gee. Shame about the rest of the country.
Actually Robert @23 Coles is cheapest in the expensive suburbs like Malvern, Bentleigh and Hawthorn and most expensive in the poorer suburbs like Balaclava and posh suburbs like Brighton which any of your marketing colleagues can tell you has been the case for 25 years. Elsternwick always sells product that is just about at its USE BY date. The price sensitive suburbs are those suburbs whose customers can shop elsewhere – wealthy people have cars and more time to shop.
In my experience Aldi has fresher product, shorter distribution chain, is cheaper and stocks more Australian product although all its canned fruit is imported.
I would quite believe that Coles and Woollies don’t want all consumers to know that they have 3 pricing tiers and Aldi has the same price Australia wide
Actually Robert @23 Coles is cheapest in the expensive suburbs like Malvern, Bentleigh and Hawthorn and most expensive in the poorer suburbs like Balaclava and posh suburbs like Brighton
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True unless you have a choice. Than it’s very cheap. And in places with money and no compeition (hello Piedemontes Nth Fitzroy) it’s quite dear.
Haven’t read the comments yet. However, the very first edition of Grocery Choice showed Woolies (IIRC) generally more expensive than Coles and resulted in Woolies lowering prices.
I emailed both the ACCC and Chris Bowen saying to give real info they should add Central Markets/Farmers markets to the website. Neither had the cojones and i wasn’t surprised Emerson didn’t either.
We really do need to break the duopoly before prices will go down. And !@$*# Howard for letting them gain such market dominance! The are not just monopolists but monopsonists: buyers monopoly.
I guess the middle of a GFC is not the best time to smash banking and grocery/booze/petrol monopolies.
As an aside, you know i am a HBS guy and passionately devoted to great beer. I read a lot about “the dead hand of communism” spreading greyness throughout the economy/community. I was reminded of that by the way Woolies gutted great beer stores and put just the standard, uninspiring beer selection in–none of the beer was fresh either!
Farmers’ markets would be exceedingly difficult to add to GroceryChoice, and probably the least useful. Markets don’t tend to have centralized IT systems which can feed prices into the website. Furthermore, they sell either specialty products or fresh items, both of which are not suitable for direct price comparison without the ability to compare product quality.
but they have the best and freshest produce. I do not buy my food from the duopoly, yuck! (apart from the odd pint milk or packet biscuits.)
A shame but not surprising they weren’t included from the get-go.
Perhaps, now that Grocery Watch is dead the Government, or the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), could inquire into how non-petrol users and those who do not fill up their tanks weekly are subsidising the petrol discounts of Woolworths and Coles customers.
If someone spends more than $30 at one time in one of the two big supermarkets they receive a docket entitling to a 4c a litre discount on petrol, around $2.00 for 50 litres at prices ranging from $1.15 to $1.30 a litre at present (or $57.50 to $65.00 $1.30). This represents a discount of between around 3.5 per cent at $57.50 to 3.1 per cent at $65.00 for 50 litres of petrol.
The subsidy by the non-petrol users (generally the poorer section of society) or those who do not spend $30 at each visit (again the poorer section of society) is either by the higher prices to pay for this petrol discount promotionor the absence of any benefit from this scheme.
It would be instructive to find out:
1. What percentage is added to overall prices in Woolworth and Coles grocery stories to finance this 4 cents a litre petrol discount.
2. The percentage of customers whose purchases do not qualify for this discount.
3. The wastage (discounts not claimed) of those receiving dockets entitling them to a 4c a litre discount.
4. What percentage should non-petrol users receive on their total grocery bill if they opted out of the petrol discount scheme.
The more astute readers will also recognise there is an environmental benefit in not encouraging higher petrol use by discounting the cost.
I actually think the government should do all my shopping for me. A licensed Shopping Agent can come round every week, get me to fill out my order in triplicate, and arrange to have the groceries delivered for a price deemed reasonable by the GroceryWatch Commissioner. The Commissioner will be obliged to take into account prices offered by Woolworths, Coles, the local Sunday markets and Brian down the road who has tomatoes out the front for $2 a bag sometimes.
The we can get to the really important stuff like having the government sort out my telephone contracts and find me the cheapest price on my next overseas holiday. Plus, there should be a royal commission into how much advertising adds to the cost of my beer.
Some commenters, honestly.
Ken Lovell at 32 reminds me of Oscar Wilde’sdefinition of a cynic as someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Robert
Technically there’s no problem. The pricing data is downloaded to the tills daily in the form of barcode|stock-keeping-unit|price records.
They have to do this as it’s the only way they can get daily specials to work.
Actual sales data is then uploaded later so they can track their stock levels.
Replicating all this across to GroceryChoice or anyone else would have been a doddle.
The only real issue would be matching data from different companies. SKU’s – stock keeping units – are particular to the company concerned. UPC’s (universal product codes – ie. barcodes) are universal but are less precise as it’s harder to pick up special offers that way.
The data matching problem is not trivial, but it’s also not a reason to hold back the data. In fact, it’s an entirely separate problem.
Making the data available is a trivial extension to the data transfers the stores already do. Adding GroceryChoice to the recipients would have been similar to adding a large superstore to their chain for each of the participants.
I do the family shopping. Typical week is about 30 to 40 items. For many of these items there will be several brands to compare so its not just a question of tracking 30 or 40 items. In theory, grocery watch would allow me to get on the web and work out the best place to shop each week. In practice, where I buy depends on what fits best in with what else I am doing combined with which shop supplies at the quality I want. I ususally look in at the fruit shop prices and quality before going into the supermarket and have enough data in my head that I can recogise some bargains if I am passing buy.
Perhaps LP should run a poll to see if there is anyone out there who would actually use grocery watch on a weekly basis.
I would prefer a government that is capable of saying that something they promised doesn’t make sense after careful consideration. It is a shame that Penny Wong wont admit that CPRS is another dud and got on with finding more price effective ways of driving down emissions.
JohnL @ 31
It would also be interesting to see how much Woolies is paying Qantas (or vice versa) for its recently introduced frequent flyer scheme with those orange everyday rewards cards. QF is waiving the $80+ joining fee (somebody must be paying for that) to encourage the uptake of the everyday card which, of course, also gives you your 4c per litre “discount” on petrol. The ff points only kick in after spending more than $30 however (just like the petrol) so if you spend $31 you get 1 ff point!
Also recently Woolies were selling bags of carrots for 89c a bag – how on earth can a farmer/vegetable grower make any profit on that once all the other parties take their cut – wholesaler etc? 1c a carrot maybe?
The “fresh food” people – that’s another laugh!
Sally Green @ 21: You really can’t escape the clutches of the supermarket chains with your dried apricots? I would have thought they were very marketable elsewhere!
Maybe a distilling licence? There’d be lots of LP bloggers who’d never disagree with you ever again – if you made apricot brandy (or some such) readily available.
But seriously, you don’t think you can jump ship?
“As for farmers, clearly somebody makes money selling to Coles and Woolies or they wouldn’t be able to source produce for their stores.”
From what I gather they do all right at the start , get a good relationship going then become addicted and dependent. The man then says we need you to do it for us a little cheaper because…”blah,blah,blah”.
They slowly sqeeze them till they are making bugger all or take on a new bunny and leave the initial farmer high and dry with produce coming out of his ears and nowhere to sell it.
In short, I have heard those supermarkets are very ruthless when it comes to producers of veg and fruit. Small manufacturers of other goods get squeezed pretty badly as well.
joe2 @ 38,
You’re right on the money. Ruthless wouldn’t even begin to describe how The Big Two operate. About five years ago my father worked for a meat company that supplied to one of The Big Two. This meat company had had a lengthy relationship with one of TBT until one day ‘it’ said to the supplier that they had found another company willing to supply the meat to them for about 2 cents cheaper so would you mind lowering your price by 3 cents.
They pleaded and said if they had to do that it would put them out of business. ‘it’ said not our problem. As supplying this one of TBT made up the vast majority of their business they were between a rock and a hard place so decided to try and continue running the company without TBT contract and went under less than a month later. All of the hundred plus employees of this long standing and respected meat company lost their jobs when it closed down.
FWIW, My father couldn’t find employment again and about 2-3 years after losing this job he had a massive stroke and is now basically an invalid. I’m not saying this one of TBT caused him to have a stroke but just wanted to point out how this duopoly affects so many people’s lives.
For those claiming that a few dollars here and there in their groceries wouldn’t matter really…I’d have to agree. For most of us.
However in an earlier age I was on the dole and every single dollar counted. Grocery choices would have been fantastic. Mind you if I was on the dole I probably wouldn’t be able to afford the internet….
When I was an impecunious student we went to the local markets. Don’t actually recall (35 years ago) going to the supermarket that often. If you are broke you could easily live without 90% of the stuff a supermarket sells. And the rest you could get at markets/co-ops etc.
Grocery choices was a total waste of our money.
All businesses have to be ‘ruthless’ or they won’t survive. It is the reason why there is such a huge variety of stuff to buy and prices – in terms of hours worked – gradually fall. As for the so called ‘duopoly’ – if anybody bothered to read Dr. Emerson reasoning why GC was shut down:
In other words, the perceived lack of competition is heavily due to government policy in the first place. No surprise there.
Mervyn, I sell the dried apricots to Angus Park. They wash and resulphur then package them for all retail outlets. Apparently they have to pay big dollars for shelf space in supermarkets. This is another distortion of the true price of products and open to corruption.
Sally G, Mate your initial post was a searing and perceptive assessment. I’m sure you’ve got the get up and go to work through it. There must be any number of people in your situation: as seen by your “equal trading partners” (ie the supermarket chains) as insignificant, disparate individuals whose freedom to operate has been mercilessly eroded. The big time players have been carefully mashalling their game plan and honing in on you for decades.
But surely there has to be another way? If you play their game, you stand to be roasted at any time – a time not of your choosing, and out of your control.
Do you or I need to live and work like that? Something only each of us can decide – but remember the Golden Rule: “Those who have the gold, make the rules.”
No it isn’t. Its a perfectly valid business strategy. You don’t think that suppliers pay for displays at the end of the aisle? Or those things hanging off shelves all along the aisle? Haven’t you *ever* asked a shop assistant where something is, only to be told that they are a rep of some other company and don’t actually work there? They are restocking their *own* space and they are making sure it is as attractive as possible to customers.
I don’t know about Aus, but many department stores overseas are in fact a bunch of sub stores, stores within a store if you like. The suppliers pay for space and they would pay more to be where the traffic flow is greatest. In a supermarket the most valuable space is at eye level and you probably have to pay for that – or at least you *should* have to.
For someone ‘in the business’ you sure have an unrealistic view of how businesses operate.
Harvey Norman uses the “store within a store” model.
I still don’t see why so many have a problem with the concept of ‘grocerychoice’ – is it the use of taxpayer dollars that offends? Have any of you used boozle.com.au? Great way to find the best price on your carton of beer – can’t see how something similar couldn’t work with grocerychoice. Maybe if the website was supported by advertising rather than taxpayer dollars? Incidentally, that website includes tbt and independents.
As for the selling of shelf space being great business – maybe – but we are seeing more and more own brand stock driving off other products. This might be ok if the own brand products were good but all I see is a shelf after shelf of e.g. coles own brand honey.
I think we are poorly served by the big two despite assertions to the contrary; they aren’t necessarily the cheapest suppliers for a lot of products (even with their superior buying power, supply chain economies etc) fruit and veg not the least of them.
I’ve been resisting the urge until now but . . .
Told you so.
rf,
I can’t speak for others, but as an opponent of GC I have absolutely no problem with a private initiative to monitor grocery prices. The issue is government money, our money, being used. This is not the role of government, an organization that history has shown we should be rather wary of. They would likely use the ‘proof’ of any trends or data that could be mined from such a database to enforce all sorts of silly ideas on the supermarkets – all for our own good of course. I am sure the results would be not to most peoples liking.
As to the issue of more own brands driving off other products this is a self correcting ‘problem’. If they go ‘too far’ people will just shop elsewhere. To claim that is not possible as there is a ‘duopoly’, well as Dr. Emerson has admitted, this duopoly is largely caused by governments in the first place.
I don’t think most supporters of the free enterprise system would necessarily claim that we are well served by what we have now. However, rather than reflexively looking to governments to ‘fix’ the problem, most of us have come to the considered conclusion that they are in large measure a cause of the problem in the first place.
“Harvey Norman uses the “store within a store” model.”
Or alternatively the “pseudo market model”.
Slowly, slowly the promised wider choice of supermarkets is diminishing. Try buying garlic other than the tasteless Chinese product. Worse still, in a country with grapes coming out of it’s ears, I cannot buy Australian sultanas at IGA Supermarkets… though you can get them in six varieties of packaging, all sourced from o/s.
And don’t get me started about miles of soft drink aisles where the largest bottles of product are readily available at $2.00 and a tiny bottle $3.50, if you can find it.
Well, you can at least partially blame me for that. I always bought the overseas variety as the Aussie ones were always too ’sugary’ or crystalline for my liking. Looks like plenty of others did the same.
Same with dried apricots, to be quite honest. Sorry Soylent, but after visiting Turkey and tasting theirs, the Aus ones are crap by comparison.
But, of course *lots* of people here would just love to deny me that choice – all for my own good of course.
I was prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt, Peter, but now I know you’re talking crap. My wife as a sultana lover (amongst other things) has conducted extensive research into the failure of imported sultanas to measure up in any way to the Australian variety.
Our choice to buy Australian no longer exists, which makes no sense from any point of view, particularly environmental.
“But, of course *lots* of people here would just love to deny me that choice – all for my own good of course.”
In a predictable feat of illogic, often employed by those who hide behind the cover of faux persecution and faith in themself as the harbinger of market sanity, Peter trys to turn the tables on me, by asserting that my choice on quality was getting in the way of his and hence crap.
And what adrian said.
Joe2, if you can’t buy Australian sultanas at IGA supermarkets then surely the fault does not lie with GroceryChoice or with the big two supermarkets, where you can buy them, but with the IGA supermarkets, who are obviously unpatriotic as well as undiscerning and thoroughly evil and which should be shut down for the good of us all.
Adrian, your wife, the sultana fancier, could exercise her freedom of choice and shop where they do stock the sultanas which meet her fancy and let other supermarkets exercise their freedom of choice in stocking sultanas which meet the tastes of their customers who prefer their sultanas from overseas and who do not want their choices dictated by your wife’s preferences.
On the contrary joe2 and adrian. I’ve never asserted that your choice gets in the way of mine. I am quite happy with the quality etc. in my local Woolies. Obviously millions of others are also. If I wasn’t I’d shop elsewhere.
If there is such a demand for Aussie sultanas as you seem to claim, and it is impossible to buy them, as you also claim, then I suggest that it would make an ideal mail order business for someone, maybe even an Aussie sultana grower. How about thinking laterally for a change, instead of forever bitching about how hard done by you are – and by you I include farmers et al grumbling about how unjust the whole food distribution business is.
Btw _ I’m not 100% convinced you can blame the lack of Aussie sultanas is a result of the nefarious activities of the supermarket chains. I haven’t heard the growers complaining about having to dump their crops ( not saying they don’t ).
Perhaps the drought means there is less available. Maybe they sell them for a higher price elsewhere – wouldn’t be the first time.
Peter, I think there is plenty available, but it’s all being exported. A quick trawl through Google shows me that I can buy Australian sultanas more cheaply in the UK than I can here, even allowing for the exchange rate and postage.
So we ship ‘em to the UK, and I’ll pay to ship ‘em back here. The free market. You know it makes sense.
Yeah, I’ve noticed you can often buy Australian wine cheaper in the UK and the US than here as well. So? It says a lot about the wonders of free trade and the massive reduction in transport costs over the years, thats all.
I think I said it once before, but one of the most remarkable examples of this I have seen in recent times is that on Hawaii’s Big Island they ship cattle live, via air freight, to the mainland US for slaughter. It’s premium beef so they get a dollar or two more per pound, but still – you got to love it!
It is crazy to think the supermarket is driven completely by demand. The big two and others often tell the consumer what they want by not providing real alternatives.
Peter and GregM both fail to understand the actual limitations in product availability, for vested interests, by suggesting eccentric choice.
rubbish joe2. I am well aware that there is more limited choices than in some other countries. But to blame a ‘duopoly’ ( and why and how that came about ) as the sole reason for this, and disregarding:
Planning laws – see Dr. Emersons statement, for christ sake.
Small population.
Making it difficult for ‘foreign retailers to enter the market’ – see Dr. Emerson again, for christ sake.
Crap eating habits of your average Aussie – much improved over the years fortunately – but to think we have less choice now than 30 years ago is insane.
People eating out a lot more – less demand for store bought food etc.
The inability of many an Australian manufacturer ( of food as well ) to understand that if they are to prosper they have to ‘go up market’ and trying to compete at the low end is a mugs game.
The main thing holding ALDI back from more stores in Melb, at least, is stupid local government laws about planning, mainly parking requirements. Naturally the big two labby councils to retain the laws and support nimby residents groups to protest against reduced requirements.
I loved ALDI since they first arrived and I used to go to Olympic Village to shop and marvel at the result of their supply chain model, their flexible work roles, cash only, pay for bags etc and knowing they pay better than the others. In contrast the big ones still have checkout persons who don’t stack shelves when slack, stackers who don’t staff checkouts when the checkouts are busy.
That said Aldi fresh goods, meat etc are around the same crap variety and quality as the other supermarts.
Grocery watch was always going to be a fizzer – how far is anyone gunna drive to save $5 on a basket of goodies?
Glen @7 or so is right – with the big two there is standardised chits – it would be trivial to get people to scan them in and collate them.
People who whinge about supermrakets need ECT. I ordered $325 from Coles this morning. It was delivered at 4pm this arvo. Delivery fee? $13. The case of VB I bought was $3 cheaper than the Liquorland next door.
People who whinge about supermrakets need ECT. I ordered $325 from Coles this morning. It was delivered at 4pm this arvo. Delivery fee? $13. The case of VB I bought was $3 cheaper than the Liquorland next door.
Liquorland IS Coles.
And anyone who thinks it’s the cheapest place for a slab needs ECT and waterboarding.
And anyone who drinks VB needs ECT, waterboarding and a candlelit dinner for two with Tony Abbott.
Can be arranged, adrian, if you ask nicely enough.
That’s a bit harsh, adrian. VB isn’t that bad.
nothing will convince me it would cost the large supermarkets much to simply download their current prices directly to a database .. they are just hiding behind ignorant people who don’t understand computers …