Coles, Woolies, local shops, wherever, my weekly average shop has risen about 25% since Jan. for pretty much the same basket.
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I’ve a perception that the frequency of specials, the value of everyday mark downs, and choice of products has been changing.
Is the cause that there are fewer savings to be had?
A quick look at the ABS current CPI data suggests ‘Food and non-alcoholic beverages’ have only gone up 0.7% in 12 months (June 20 qtr - June 21 qtr).
The stand out category for price increases over 12 months - might include Hervey Norman and Nick Scali? IE ‘Furnishings, household equipment and services’ with 16.9% rise. Transport has the second highest increase in costs 10.7%.
Lie of the year might be ‘Insurance and financial services’ with an annual 0.6% increase.
Perhaps Choice needs to look at how that data is collected and reported? Does the ABS rely too heavily on the nominated industries/sectors to provide the data? @BrendanMays
After looking to
I’m none the wiser.
A consumer can purchase based on premium brands at full price or home brands or only on special. Is the raw data used by the ABS available to enable a more informed view?
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Meat (lamb and beef) has increased substantially in that time.
Some fruit and vegetables have also increased substantially (for example truss tomatoes from $2.99/kg up to $9.90/kg last week) but this is more likely to be a Tassie seasonal and biosecurity thing.
I haven noticed many other products increasing more than $0.05-$0.10 for lower cost products (<$2 items) and proportionally more for more expensive ones
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A related topic is
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If you would like product quality to decrease, competition to decrease, variety or range to decrease, the number of retailers to decrease, and give the remaining retailers the power to dictate terms to their suppliers, grocery shopping at Coles and Woolworths is an excellent way to do it.
Bonus tip: Both of these have “home-brand” products. Woolworths have started hiding the fact that a products is “home-brand”, by giving them other brand names. For example, “Smitten” is the Woolworths “home-brand” of dry cat food. I imagine that Coles is not far behind.
Buying “home-brand” products at Coles and Woolworths will enable you to speed up the processes described at the start of this post.
You make five claims there, do you have any data behind them?
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That is like shopping at Aldi, where every brand (save for a special now and then) is a made up named ‘home brand’. Aldi demonstrated how powerful ‘home brands’ are in the marketplace and Colesworth eventually caught on to it with ‘made up brands’ rather than their own names.
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Manufacturers have also been gaming the system as well, with some having multiple brand names under the parent company. The big multinationals are particularly good at this (e.g. Nestle, Mars, P&G etc). The Nestle website shows all its 2000 brands.
This allows them to capture more of the market as they can have multiple product brands in the one category.
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The big multinationals purchased many existing highly successful branded product lines and companies and integrated and expanded their product lines. Not quite the same business model as making it all up oneself. And not quite the same as having ‘your store’ being the sole source for ‘your’ made-up brand.
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What is it wrong about a manufacturer having many brand names and many products?
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Some have made up multiple brand names…and yes they have acquired them as well…as some brand names are where value may lie.
Nothing, it makes good business sense in popular product lines to increase total market share. I made the comment in relation to supermarkets having their own (multiple) brand names. Just highlighting manufacturers are similar where they also have their own (multiple brand names).
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No data. Merely my own observations, and news stories on the TV, over the last few decades. It’s hardly proper double-blind objective scientific research, I think you’ll agree. 
I know. It works very well. We “Aussies” love it.
There are plenty of ways of gathering information to support views not involving double-blind testing, I thought you might be able to tell us some relevant to your claims. Perhaps as the questions you raise are consumer issues some body concerned with such matters may have written about it.
More importantly is the data empirically representative of what is actually happening in the real world, or is it an artifice such as the job data?
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Are you saying the ABS labour market statistics are faulty? In what way? How do you know?
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No I am not disputing the accuracy of the market statistics being collected by the ABS. I think they do a good job.
I am questioning whether the data being collect is truly representative of the actual ‘cost of living’ and whether it is time to revisit the selection? For example it doesn’t include investments or real estate, and as you are no doubt aware the cost of renting, and buying is increasing suddenly and dramatically. Surely this is a significant contributor to the cost of living?
I eas just looking at 2 different products one was 10 grams different in size but the same price cant understand that. 2 blocks of chocolate they were same brand and exactly same type of bar but same price
Any chance you might like to share the details of the retailer and product? It may be others in the community will find the same elsewhere. It sounds like a shrinking product packaging change. An alternative to a noticeable price rise, is to supply less for the same price.
There is a seperate topic in the community on the practice, if there is any further interest.
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