Online list of prices

dudara

The idea is obvious, but there are limits to its use. There is no point in going to a shop just to save on baked beans. You would need to save consistently over your whole shopping basket, and those savings would need to be factored against the (potential) extra costs of getting to that shop (such as petrol and time).

In reality, the supermarket chains are generally competitive relative to each other. On any given week, Dunnes may be cheaper for meat, but Tesco will be cheaper for toilet paper and shampoo (for instance).

What I'm trying to say is that a more holistic view needs to be taken on price - not a simple item by item view.

MOH

I think it's a terrible idea.

As has been pointed out, there would be a massive cost to businesses, which would inevitably be passed on to consumers.

Are you proposing to force this on every retailer nationwide? So a small village shop run by an elderly couple without internet access would be required to publish their prices online just as Tesco would?

What kind of penalties would there be for inaccurate information? And how would you distinguish between deliberate misquoting and errors. What actually happens if someone arrives at a store and the price is different to the one quoted online?

It would be terrible for bricks and mortar stores competing with internet rivals (e.g sports stores), since their prices would no doubt be compared directly against their competition, without people considering that there's advantages (such as being able to physically examine items before buying) offset by higher overheads.

Many of the larger retail chains already offer online shopping or price information, which they choose to do. But forcing everyone to do it is an awful idea.

mylastparadigm

jees, there seems to be an awful amount of neysayers taking the idea to extremes, using hard cases to make this seem like a bad idea. the rattle is being thrown out of the pram big time over a very trivial and simple idea. i assure you though, it is not a bad idea. It is a well-known fact that we see the faults in other's works more readily than we do in our own.

so, lets make it really simple.
in the realm of supermarkets and convienence stores. take tesco, dunnes, musgraves, and spar and other multiples.

a system where each of them were forced by law to submit their current price data to a common web form. now, where is all the cost coming from? :rolleyes: really? thats all they gotta do. nothing else. just do that, so the price online matches the price at the til. online shopping does not let you compare price to other brick and mortar stores. that is the idea here!!!

all the prices come from head office anyway. they forward this information. simple as. no huge cost.

benefit: costumer can plan the weekly shop, hitting the stores for specific items. saving money.

con: if you had a working system like this in a perfect world where everyone used it accordingly, loss leaders would be redundant. so cheap nappies or washing up powder to get you into the store would probably stop because you'd only go in for them and nothing else. (for all your waffle and flapping about guys, you missed this obvious negative effect. proves yous know f all about it.)


but overall, if people went to the stores for the cheapest item, the stores would have to compete with each other on regular pricing rather than 'special offers' and loss leaders.

i can never understand that the very people who are being ripped off are the first inline to defend the status quo. its not like im proposing a communist revolution here. just evolution into the 21st century.

mylastparadigm

MOH wrote: »

I think it's a terrible idea.

are we taking nuking japan terrible or jewish concentration camp terrible? or are you just prone to hyperbole when you are commenting annonymously?

:rolleyes:

Guy:Incognito

mylastparadigm wrote: »

are we taking nuking japan terrible or jewish concentration camp terrible? or are you just prone to hyperbole when you are commenting annonymously?

:rolleyes:

Hmmm

mylastparadigm wrote: »

no way should companies be free to do business as they see fit!!! :rolleyes: think ENRON, our own ANGLO, as the first things that come to mind.

mathepac

dudara wrote: »

... There is no point in going to a shop just to save on baked beans. ....

There are times when I despair. The baked beans thing was just a simple illustrative example.

dudara wrote: »

... You would need to save consistently over your whole shopping basket, and those savings would need to be factored against the (potential) extra costs of getting to that shop (such as petrol and time). ...

I wonder do posters actually read posts before rushing to their keyboards to dismiss them?

The need to get all the pricing from all the multiples available in one place is to facilitate planning; the exercise is pointless otherwise. The purpose behind giving geographic span / scope of the pricing (the prices at shops in given locality) is to plan where to shop in order to balance price savings against time, travel costs etc.

dudara wrote: »

... In reality, the supermarket chains are generally competitive relative to each other. On any given week, Dunnes may be cheaper for meat, but Tesco will be cheaper for toilet paper and shampoo (for instance). ...

But that's a given, which is why the idea is being mooted in the first place to facilitate a planned shop in order to maximize savings to the consumer.

dudara wrote: »

... What I'm trying to say is that a more holistic view needs to be taken on price - not a simple item by item view.

Clearly you have failed to grasp the concept behind an innovative proposal from OP. What does that last sentence of yours actually mean?

I thinks OP's idea is brilliant but apparently the biggest obstacle to overcome is the inertia and outright negativity of consumers.

Africa

mathepac wrote: »

I thinks OP's idea is brilliant but apparently the biggest obstacle to overcome is the inertia and outright negativity of consumers.

I think its just the ones that have been on Consumer Issues lately... some very strange people with very strange views.

This has been done and proven to work in the UK and with other services here, why not shopping. If I had access to something like this, Id use it.

Guy:Incognito

Some posters are picking bits of the OP's idea and declaring it great

The OP wants EVERY retail store in the country to be required by law to put their prices in to an online comparison site and keep it updated daily.

Once again, if the large supermarkets want to do sometthgn on a voluntary basis, like in the UK, thats fine, they are free to do so already.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Sorry for pouring more negativity on this (and I normally embrace change/technology) but I can't see the merit here at all. We shop in a particular supermarket becasue it's convenient. It's nearby. It is part of a large centre with other retailers we use. They carry some products we want while other stores don't. We like some of their own brand items. We know our way around the store. Their fruit and veg is better quality even if slightly more exoensive. Some items are cheaper than elsewhere; others more expensive - little difference on the entire trolley. Our time is too valuable to start banging shopping price queries into a PC to see where to shop for what this week. Even with favoutites stored we're not interested in looking each up every week for comparison.

The cost to the retailers of maintaning the system would be passed to us the customers.

All in all I my family (and we have talked about this thread) says they could not be bothered looking up grocery prices before buying. They certainly will not split the basket between stores.

Good luck with the idea but I know one family not interested and 11 others in the office here who don't see the point.

mathepac

The growth potential for the idea is immense.

Once all the data are in place, home-shoppers can key in their favourute (branded items) and a personal auto-shopper scans through the prices and picks the best priced items to be consolidated and packaged for collection at each shop by the consumer at the customer service desk (an adaption of the rather soul-less Argos model).

Multiples with low prices get repeat business, enabling them to either take their profit or run 'specials' on fast-moving items with assistance from their suppliers.

Another possibility is that the "over-all best value" trolley of groceries gets delivered free to the consumer once the order is placed with a shop. The personal shopper scans through all the prices and shows all the totals by shop for the shopping-list, makes a recommendation based on all items being in stock with current pricing, displays the 'receipts' to the shopper and allows him/her to make a choice as to where to place the order with the greatest savings, with optional free delivery. Payment processing is for any on-line shop with 'points' allocated to the shoppers loyalty card as appropriate.

There is little different in this scenario than with other price-comparison web-sites for car-insurance, for example.

Guy:Incognito

mathepac wrote: »

There is little different in this scenario than with other price-comparison web-sites for car-insurance, for example.

The need to physically travel to each location is one big difference.

Plus I want to pick my own food. Nothing annoys me more than someone grabbing a sliced pan like its a baseball bat they are holding in an alley with a guy walking towards them.

But again. How does the local shop owner with no extra money or time work this?

RangeR

unsub /ignore

mathepac

RangeR wrote: »

unsub /ignore

Perfect

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

RangeR wrote: »

unsub /ignore

Pardon!

skinny90

mathepac wrote: »

The growth potential for the idea is immense.

Once all the data are in place, home-shoppers can key in their favourute (branded items) and a personal auto-shopper scans through the prices and picks the best priced items to be consolidated and packaged for collection at each shop by the consumer at the customer service desk (an adaption of the rather soul-less Argos model).

Multiples with low prices get repeat business, enabling them to either take their profit or run 'specials' on fast-moving items with assistance from their suppliers.

Another possibility is that the "over-all best value" trolley of groceries gets delivered free to the consumer once the order is placed with a shop. The personal shopper scans through all the prices and shows all the totals by shop for the shopping-list, makes a recommendation based on all items being in stock with current pricing, displays the 'receipts' to the shopper and allows him/her to make a choice as to where to place the order with the greatest savings, with optional free delivery. Payment processing is for any on-line shop with 'points' allocated to the shoppers loyalty card as appropriate.

There is little different in this scenario than with other price-comparison web-sites for car-insurance, for example.

Hi,
Whilst the concept is very good yet original I dont think it would work.Who finance's the project?a third party?if so how does a 3rd party make their money?This is only the start.Now on to the nitty gritty stuff.just look at tesco or dunnes.How many products do they sell?How often do prices change?lets just take figroles for example as it was mentioned here somewhere.how many different brands are there,what about other variables such as the item size/weight vs price or even more important promotional packing ie 2for 1 multipackaging where theres special promotional pos on the product that may be on the shelf for a day-2days pending on agreement with suppliers. I dont mean to critisise because its good thinking? I didnt read threw this thread fully but do you not think that if it could be done,It would have been done already?
With car insurance comparison websites variables are alot easier to manage,believe me it is very different.

mathepac

skinny90 wrote: »

... I didnt read threw this thread fully but do you not think that if it could be done,It would have been done already?
... .

Well facebook, Skype, Google, ebay / Paypal hadn't been done before either until someone went and did them. The two Steves, Wozniak and Jobs refused to listen when the rest of the world said Windoze was the only way to go. One of them lived long enough to see the company he started become (briefly) the single most valuable corporation in the world, now with better revenues, a more valuable installed base and a bigger bank balance than their former rival Microsoft.

skinny90 wrote: »

...
With car insurance comparison websites variables are alot easier to manage,believe me it is very different.

There are no complications that simple on-line retail grocery shop will throw up in comparison to production and materials planning systems, insurance, airline, car or hotel reservations systems.

Thanks for your support.

skinny90

so how will the concept make money?

skinny90

mathepac wrote: »

Well facebook, Skype, Google, ebay / Paypal hadn't been done before either until someone went and did them. The two Steves, Wozniak and Jobs refused to listen when the rest of the world said Windoze was the only way to go. One of them lived long enough to see the company he started become (briefly) the single most valuable corporation in the world, now with better revenues, a more valuable installed base and a bigger bank balance than their former rival Microsoft.
There are no complications that simple on-line retail grocery shop will throw up in comparison to production and materials planning systems, insurance, airline, car or hotel reservations systems.

Thanks for your support.

If you feel so strongly about the idea then go for it,prove me wrong....By the way the reason the two steeves where succesful was the fact that they came up with concepts and business models that up to then had never existed. This idea is good but as a business it wont work. And im not even going over reasons that was already mentioned by other posters.

If you think the concept is like that of an insurance comparison site you are incorrect.At present the main streams of revenue are either flat fee based,hits per page based based on customers clicking on a link and it redirecting it to the business's website or mainly commision based.In fact majority of them are commision based.so when the website preforms the transaction they get their cut and the rest goes to towards ryanair,Aviva,durys hotel etc http://affiliates.ebookers.com/faq.php

Alot of commision comes from business's which require specific information from the customer so the system can research and retrieve what the customer needs ie car insurance-driver details etc flights, destination-personal details etc,
Will Dunnes/Tesco traditionly seen as a high volume/low margin business pay a comission towards a potiental increase or decrease in its customers?doubt it
will customers want to be entering in specific details in order to get the save a euro on a 250g block of cheese?I doubt it

MOH

mylastparadigm wrote: »

are we taking nuking japan terrible or jewish concentration camp terrible? or are you just prone to hyperbole when you are commenting annonymously?

:rolleyes:

mylastparadigm wrote: »

jees, there seems to be an awful amount of neysayers taking the idea to extremes, using hard cases to make this seem like a bad idea. the rattle is being thrown out of the pram big time over a very trivial and simple idea. i assure you though, it is not a bad idea. It is a well-known fact that we see the faults in other's works more readily than we do in our own.

so, lets make it really simple.
in the realm of supermarkets and convienence stores. take tesco, dunnes, musgraves, and spar and other multiples.

all the prices come from head office anyway. they forward this information. simple as. no huge cost.


but overall, if people went to the stores for the cheapest item, the stores would have to compete with each other on regular pricing rather than 'special offers' and loss leaders.

i can never understand that the very people who are being ripped off are the first inline to defend the status quo. its not like im proposing a communist revolution here. just evolution into the 21st century.

Eh, what?

I think something is a terrible idea, I give reasoned arguments why, and you start talking about nuking japan and concentration camps and accuse me of hyperbole? Lol.

You don't seem to have read your own OP properly. It states "all items that are for retail in the country". There's no mention of "large multiples", with "head offices" who decide everything. You said every retailer of everything, and then when people pointed out issues with that, moved the goalposts to talk about large multiples and claimed they were the ones taking arguments to extremes.

You also seem to think every Spar shop in the country has identical prices set by "head office", with no variation. And then you say people disagreeing with you "know f all about it", (based on you mentioning one argument no one had presented yet).

So where does this end up in the long run? Homogenous pricing everywhere, and less competition. Which always works out well for the consumer.

It is a well-known fact that we see the faults in other's works more readily than we do in our own.

Definitely agree with you on that 100%. :rolleyes:

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

mathepac wrote: »

There are no complications that simple on-line retail grocery shop will throw up in comparison to production and materials planning systems, insurance, airline, car or hotel reservations systems.

Thanks for your support.

You are seriously deluded. Each supermarket chain stocks thousands of products. many carry differing brands. Daily offers apply in retail. Absolutely no comparison with Insurance products of flights. maintaining a grocery database would be hundreds of times more consuming than those products. Sorry but has this been fully thought through? Do you actually do a weekly shop for a family that includes from nappy wearing toddlers to teenagers?

mylastparadigm

Lorenzo Glamorous Bird wrote: »

Sorry but has this been fully thought through?

you'd swear this was dragons den!

no, this has not been fully thought through. this is simply an exercise in teasing out what is possible and the pitfalls or problems with doing something like this. you can absolutely depend on annonymous posters on an internet forum to sit back and take shots at any idea they didnt think of themselves. its useful to me because i can learn about the idea, the likely objections and likely arguements against it.

mylastparadigm

skinny90 wrote: »

so how will the concept make money?

its not ment to make money! once you start putting ads on a site like this concept you lose independence. its ment to be a public service idea.

what about the cost? well, in a world where we are spending 67billion paying off debts we didn incur, i think we could manage it.

MOH

mylastparadigm wrote: »

no, this has not been fully thought through. this is simply an exercise in teasing out what is possible and the pitfalls or problems with doing something like this. you can absolutely depend on annonymous posters on an internet forum to sit back and take shots at any idea they didnt think of themselves. i

You post a suggestion on a forum, then bemoan "anonymous posters" taking shots at it when they don't agree with it - what do you expect, photographic ID along with every criticism.

You make no effort to respond to any arguments made against it, but resort instead to taking shots at anyone who criticises your idea.

I'm not sure what you're expecting to get out of this. It's all quite amusing though.

Bandana boy

Any price that a company advertises is just an invitation to treat
They do not have to actually match that price at the checkout.
There are several law cases that back this up
So if you made legislation that every supermarket had to advertise a price they could all just advertise 1p for all items and still be within the law.

Problems with your suggestion if you where to get around common law

1. Not all chains in a supermarket chain have the same price so does Dunnes have to load a price for every store in the country
2. prices change through out the day already ,how often do they have to update their prices?
3.who enforces this advertised price on the shop
4.Increased legislation on any industry increases the cost to the consumer ,in some cases this more beneficial to the consumers than the cost or is a long term saving so the market bears it.
In others their is an ethical benefit that the market as a population welcomes.I do not believe the market sees a problem with the current scenario hence would not be willing to take an increase in the cost of goods to pay for this scheme.

mylastparadigm

MOH wrote: »

You post a suggestion on a forum, then bemoan "anonymous posters" taking shots at it when they don't agree with it - what do you expect, photographic ID along with every criticism.

You make no effort to respond to any arguments made against it, but resort instead to taking shots at anyone who criticises your idea.

I'm not sure what you're expecting to get out of this. It's all quite amusing though.

have you anymore to say on the topic or are you happy to waste your time talking about me? im flattered.

skinny90

mylastparadigm wrote: »

skinny90 wrote: »

so how will the concept make money?

its not ment to make money! once you start putting ads on a site like this concept you lose independence. its ment to be a public service idea.

what about the cost? well, in a world where we are spending 67billion paying off debts we didn incur, i think we could manage it.

So basically u ask for an opinion and then get annoyed when I give you honest feedback,take it on the chin or else come back to me with a valid argument

mylastparadigm

skinny90 wrote: »

So basically u ask for an opinion and then get annoyed when I give you honest feedback,take it on the chin or else come back to me with a valid argument

that was not an annoyed response. all i said is its not ment to make money. there is no arguement there. its not a money making excercise. its a public service.

sorry if you took offence. it was not at all intended.

MOH

mylastparadigm wrote: »

have you anymore to say on the topic or are you happy to waste your time talking about me? im flattered.

There's a couple more problems with your idea I could suggest, but since I'm just some anonymous internet troll who spends my day ripping apart any idea that's not mine, it seems a bit pointless. :rolleyes:

skinny90

mylastparadigm wrote: »

skinny90 wrote: »

So basically u ask for an opinion and then get annoyed when I give you honest feedback,take it on the chin or else come back to me with a valid argument

that was not an annoyed response. all i said is its not ment to make money. there is no arguement there. its not a money making excercise. its a public service.

sorry if you took offence. it was not at all intended.

Ok well as a public service this would receive massive critism towards it as it will be passed on the customers,tesco dunnes are a high volume low margin business they won't absorb the cost.if its made legal for business's to accept this that won't look good for the business's setting up in Ireland if everything is gonna be published online and then compared to competitors. Sites/systems like this are great for certain types of goods-mainly services offered.
Services in generall have a higher margin to give commission to the website

skinny90

Is this a project for college?if so what's it about?