Yes, information overload can be a problem for many grocery shoppers, especially if there are lots of prices on the the signs (selling price, unit price, previous price, amount saved etc). This is why I suggest that shoppers focus on the unit price. But, of course, if you only have so much to spend when shopping you need to also look at the selling price.
And, over time, unless reminded from time to time about the presence of unit prices and how to us them, some some shoppers will make less use of unit prices⊠This is why we need on-going consumer education about unit pricing.
However, lost of people do use it. In a 2011 on line national survey of around 1000 shoppers undertaken for Choice and the Qld Consumers Association 80% said they used unit pricing and of these nearly three quarters said that it was very helpfulâŠ
hehe I am not sure how many lost of people there were but I am sure lots of people do to It was too good to miss @ijarratt I juxtapose letters all the time but this one is not one a spell checker picks up.
Thank you for explaining why you believe unit pricing even on fruit and vegetables is appropriate and useful. Your comment that others have handled the same fruit you have makes no difference, most fruits and vegetables require humans to harvest them so theyâve been handled since then, and if one doesnât wash the fruit/vegetables prior to use then one risks becoming very unwell. As to damaged fruit/veges well, if I see one that has been damaged then I simply donât buy it, whereas in pre packaged fruit/veges one canât always see that there are compromised products included in the pack, the result being that the mold etc is soon spread through the entire package. I stopped buying pre-packaged berries for this very reason.
I also only buy fruit/vegetables that are in season NOW, therefore I donât purchase citrus, for example, out of season because theyâve either been in cold storage or imported, in which case their nutrient value is questionable, itâs far better to buy frozen instead.
@ijarratt I am so much in the habit of checking content - sugar, salt etc - I am now accustomed to frequently checking the unit price. It doesnât mean I always buy the cheapest - last week I wanted low cal chocolate drinks, but thought it worth the extra money to try a flavour that was in sachets instead of my usual flavour in a container with lower unit price.
I have also used the unit price to compare between stores.
I wanted some sliced mushrooms in Aldi on Friday ,picked up a small prepackaged box out of refrigerated shelf moved along to table and a box double the weight of the same sliced mushrooms were exactly the same price!!! You need to be totally switched on ,just like when driving a car ,there are traps everywhere - speeding fines and pricing rorts nothing is simple anymore and they make money by knowing the human brain is not always engaged every second of every day one lapse and up goes their profit.
Thanks.Very good point re potential problems due to âdamaged, etcâ items in packs of F&V. Will add it to my list of the pros and cons of buying loose and packaged F&V.
Glad you mentioned not always buying the cheapest unit price item. I certainly do that with some products, for example cheese (I usually buy it pre-sliced because I then eat much less than if i sliced it myself!!
Interesting that you have used unit pricing to compare prices between stores. I also use it that way sometimes, especially when comparing the value of an item i have not bought before and I need to decide the store where I will buy it. I did not include it in the list because I wanted to keep the list as short as possible in order to maximize the number of responses.
Yes, thatâs a good example of when you might want to âadjustâ the unit prices yourself to take account of the differences in the amount of an important ingredient or the productâs concentration.
Many thanks to the 106 of you who told me how you use unit pricing in supermarkets to make 5 types of value comparisons.
This is probably the first time this information has over been obtained anywhere! So, it adds greatly to our understanding of the topic,
In summary:
overall use for each type of value comparison was very high (95%-100%)
frequent use for each type was also very high (70% - 89%)
the most frequent uses were to compare: the same brandâs pack sizes (89%), regular and special offer prices (88%), and different brands and pack sizes (84%).
the lowest percentages for frequent use were to compare: products packaged and loose from bulk (78%) and simple and complex packaging (70%).
These percentages are likely to be well above what a survey of all consumers might produce, however they are still very valuable because they show that consumers use unit prices frequently to:
make a variety of value comparisons, not just one or two.
compare products sold loose from bulk and prepackaged.
The results certainly highlight the need to ensure that Trade Measurement requirements (esp for the measurement units use to price products sold loose from bulk and to show the quantity in prepackaged products) take full account of the requirements of of Unit Pricing Code which only applies to constant measure prepackages.
Thanks for posting this Brendan. This is about an ACCC Fact Sheet. It is part of a national consumer education campaign that will run to the end of October. State and territory consumer affairs agencies are running a social media campaign.
The consumer education campaign is in response to a request from CFA. It is to help more consumers, especially those adversely affected now (or likely to be in the future) by the CV-19 economic crisis, to be aware of grocery unit pricing and to use it to save money.
I am very pleased that the campaign is being undertaken. Also, that it draws attention to the many different types of value comparisons that can be made with unit pricesâŠ
The challenge is buying online and comparing products from different supermarkets (where they have online pricing). In store it is easy as one just has to look at the labelsâŠcomparing online supermarket websites adds another layer of complexity.
One also canât usually use the online supermarket websites for in store pricing (such as Coles) to make a decision where best to do a shop this week as the in store prices may vary to those online.
A few products that Woolworths have claimed to have in stock, have proved to not exist in the 4 stores in my area - they say âwebsite updated every 2 hoursâ. Maybe is on their system, just doesnât make it out to the internet search. So now shopping more online from other sources as even paying for delivery is better than hassle. A measure of our stress limit now - how much can we cope with chasing products? Ordering food products from interstate is not something I would have considered before.
I often find the opposite. Neither Woollies nor Coles list 10 x 375ml packs Kirks Ginger Ale on their websites despite both stocking them along with the 8 other flavours.
I also just noticed that Woollies have jacked their price for the other flavours up to $7.00 a pack whilst Coles remain at $6.20.
And just to be more annoying, Coles regularly has no stock of the Ginger Ale despite having all the other flavours in stock.
(in humorous mode so please take it with a laugh) Ok @Fred123 you just gotta stop buying so much of it so they can restock it before your next trip. Itâs a lot of weight to lift those packs onto those shelves, Iâm sure they have plenty of compo claims for back injuries due to lifting Ginger Ales all day longâŠwell maybe not so much ginger but Ales or was it CD or Northern Lager
I agree. It is much easier to use unit pricing on shelf labels than online. Even comparing the unit prices of products on a single online site that provides them is far too difficult let alone comparing them between online sites and using online unit prices to decide where to shop instore.
Hopefully, at least some of the problems will be addressed when the federal govt gets round to completing and implementing the review of the Grocery Unit Pricing Code that started in Nov 2018.
A big need is to make provision of unit prices by online sites compulsory if they sell less than the 11 types of grocery products listed in the Code. Currently several online sites do not provide unit pricing.
Happy to hear views on the above and the many other problems that IMO greatly reduce the ability to use unit pricing effectively at online sites.
Something I noticed in our local Woollies today is some of the instore unit pricing is next to uselessâŠor makes it very difficult to see if there is a price difference between products. Two examples include:
Looking at the unit price, it appears that the tea bags are the same price so that no matter the size of the packet, they cost the sameâŠwrongâŠ
If one buys two of the 50 pack to make a 100 pack, it is $0.38 dearer or about 7% dearer.
And a second example:
Again, the unit pricing tends to give the impression that the jars of garlic are similar in price based on their weightâŠwrongâŠif one buys 2 of the right jar to make the same volume as the left jar, it works out to be $0.25 more or about 10%.
We have seen similar examples in other supermarkets (Coles and IGA) and independent stores as well.
This does show one of the problems with the current unit pricing system where the stores can decide on the units of the measure (e.g. per item, per 10g for large container etc) to encourage shoppers to buy smaller volumes of the same/similar product which may be more expense to the shopper and potentially better for the supermarkets.
Any unit pricing scheme should have units relevant to the size of the packaging. For the above examples, the tea and jars should be measured as per 100g so that shoppers have a better comparison between products. The unit being 100g, the differences are noticeable, such as $0.45/100g and $0.50/100g for the garlic jars and $2.16/100g and $2.04/100g for the tea.
The Australian system has this to some extent. For example, herbs and spices, and some other products, must be unit priced per 10g. Also, products sold by number in packages of 41 or more items should be unit priced per 100 items (unless most of the packages of that product contain 40 or less items in which case all should be unit priced per item).
So if minced garlic is regarded as a spice, not a vegetable, it should be unit priced per 10g. And this is is what the 2 big supermarkets usually but not always do, e.g. online one of them has one brand unit priced per 100g, which is an error that it should correct.
You are right that when small units of measure are used, differences in unit pricing can be lost due to rounding, unless the differences are very large.
This is particularly the situation with your tea bag example when the unit of measure is 1 bag!. IMO the Code requires both of these packages of tea bags to be unit priced per 100 bags or 100g. I prefer the use of 100g since that also allows comparisons with loose tea.
Iâm not in favour of having different units of measure for unit pricing different pack sizes. I like the principles in the Code of using one unit of measure for all pack sizes of a product and using the same unit of measure for products sold loose from bulk and in packages (e.g. meat and fruit and vegetables). Many unit of measure problems are due to retailer non compliance with the Unit Pricing Code
Under Food Standards Australia, it is classed as a vegetable, under the category of a bulb vegetable.
The error is that they have incorrectly classed it as a spice, when it isnât. All the 10g units should be 100g and not 10g as used by the supermarkets.
It was too good to miss 
