Author Topic: Supermarket surprise?  (Read 4296 times)

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Offline Maik

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Supermarket surprise?
« on: Saturday, 22 September, 2018 @ 17:23:25 »
A price comparison from supermarkets' own websites comparing like for like, e.g. Nescafe 200 gram jar. Although why would you buy a 200 gram jar of Nescafe at Sainsbury's for £5.80 when you could buy, at Sainsbury's, a 300 gram jar for £4.50?




Supermarket pricing isn't straightforward. Morrisons would charge you £8 to buy that 300 gram jar of Nescafe but, being smart, you'd buy a 200 gram jar for £4 and a 100 gram jar for £3.27, making a total of £7.27, a saving of 73p. Or you could buy not 300 but 400 grams (2x 200 gram jars) for your eight quid.




Comparing like for like isn't easy as not all the supermarkets sell their items in the same sizes as their competitors. Taking Fairy Liquid as an example, I found eleven different sizes across the five supermarkets but only two sizes were sold by all five, I compared 625ml prices as these were the better value of the two.


Prices in GBP per litre


Not only is there a bewildering range of sizes, here's the bewildering range of Fairy washing up liquids available:

Fairy Original
Fairy Original with LiftAction
Fairy Apple
Fairy Lemon
Fairy Citrus Grove
Fairy Pomegranate
Fairy Pomegranate And Honeysuckle
Fairy Platinum
Fairy Platinum Lemon
Fairy Platinum With 3X Action
Fairy Antibacterial Eucalyptus
Fairy Antibacterial Lime & Lemongrass
Fairy Pure & Clean
Fairy Clean & Care Rose & Satin
Fairy Clean & Care Aloe Vera & Cucumber

See if I've missed any at:
Waitrose
Sainsbury's
Tesco
Morrisons
Asda

When I buy washing up liquid I just want the best value for money, I don't give a fig (or an apple, or lemon, or pomegranite... ) about whether it's green, lime green, lemon or pink and I suspect most people have the same selection criteria.

Moving on... In a few cases where there wasn't a common size I've used price per kilo/litre to make the comparison as accurate as possible.

At the start I tried to compare Aldi and Lidl prices as well but it soon became apparent it wasn't possible to include those two as they don't have the same breadth of items.

All comparisons were in the same 24 hour period and are compared at the prices listed. However, in some cases, especially at Tesco and Morrisons, there were 'special offers' which were better value but couldn't be compared as they were unique to that supermarket.

The total price for Morrisons looks worse due to two items in particular, both of which most folk probably don't buy regularly, if at all. Morrisons were charging £27.50 for Courvoisier 70 cl when the price at Sainsbury's, Tesco and Asda was about £7 less. Also, Morrisons don't offer one litre of own brand virgin olive oil, so I priced it as 2x0.5 ltr. As most folk won't buy these you could knock a tenner off the Morrisons total and then there's little total price difference between Sainsbury's, Tesco and Morrisons.

If you want to check out the comparisons here's a spreadsheet, composed in LibreOffice but saved in MS .xlsx format so it should open OK.

« Last Edit: Saturday, 22 September, 2018 @ 17:59:47 by Maik »