The Queensland Consumers Association released this statement on the government’s decision to extend unit pricing unchanged until 1 October 2021. What are your thoughts?
Federal govt’s decision on grocery price labelling disappoints consumers
The Queensland Consumers Association is disappointed with the Federal government’s decision to just extend unchanged until 1 October 2021 the regulation that requires large supermarkets to provide the unit price for prepackaged grocery products.
The current regulation, which has been in operation for 10 years, was due to expire on 1 October 2019.
The Association and other consumer organisations want changes to the regulation to increase its effectiveness, and to expand its scope to more grocery retailers and to other relevant retailers, such as chemists and hardware shops.
However, the government is just proposing that these be further considered in the review that started in November 2018.
The Association says that consumers, who have already had 10 years of substandard unit pricing, should not have to experience this for another 2 years.
Therefore, grocery retailers should take the current regulation’s requirements much more seriously and the ACCC should monitor and enforce compliance much more effectively and proactively.
The unit price is the price per unit of measure (such as per 100g for breakfast cereals or per litre for milk).
It can greatly assist shoppers to make informed choices, get the best value for money, help with cost/standard of living pressures, and save time.
Association spokesperson, Ian Jarratt - who led the campaign for compulsory grocery unit pricing - says “Unit pricing is a simple, but extremely powerful tool that, if provided well, can be the consumer’s best friend in the supermarket”.
However, far too often it is provided badly, for example a Choice national survey showed that 64% of consumers using grocery unit pricing had issues with how it is provided, especially
- the use of small and non-bold print,
- non and intermittent provision,
- the use of incorrect or inconsistent units of measure, and
- inaccurate unit prices.
Grocery retailers make sure that selling prices are very prominent and very legible, and are accurate, and say they are customer-focused and want to provide customers with value and convenience.
Therefore, as also required by the regulation, they should to do the same with unit prices by making them very easy for consumers to notice, read, understand and use.
Recent research by the Association shows that unit prices often vary greatly between brands and pack sizes and that there is great potential for consumers to use unit pricing to get better value.
For a basket of packaged products, choosing a low unit price brand of similar pack size resulted in overall savings of around 50% and changing brand pack size delivered overall savings of over 20%.
The savings that individual consumers can obtain from taking unit prices into account when shopping will vary greatly depending on what they buy now and where.
However, consumers spend around $100 billion a year on groceries alone and many households spend a substantial proportion of total income on groceries.
So, it would be very beneficial for many consumers if the quality of the grocery unit pricing required by the present regulation was greatly improved.
The benefits would be even greater if more grocery retailers and other types of retailers, such as chemists and hardware stores, also had to provide unit pricing for packaged products.
Note for editors
The instrument providing for the extension of the regulation to 1 October 2021 is available here Legislation (Deferral of Sunsetting—Trade Practices (Industry Codes—Unit Pricing) Regulations) Certificate 2019
