Online list of prices

mylastparadigm

Lorenzo Glamorous Bird wrote: »

If Tesco have 20000 items how do you expect daily updates on prices and to take account of what can be hourly offers? Also, do they have to record stock levels - as I often find items I want are out of stock in any one week.

nope, cant expect miracles. do you expect hourly updates?

well, for hourly offers, by the time the shopper has checked the site, sorted the kids, parked the car, assembled their shopping, the hour would be up. pardon me but that question is farcical. did you even think about it? these are exactly the pedantic extreme questions any idiot could ask to hammer an idea. i keep saying it - try focus on the bigger picture.

How did you come up with 10% in your sample above?

read the post again - i did exactly as i explained ffs.

Lets flesh out the points raised - it's a formative idea so that's what you do with such things.

flesh out? all you are doing is asking questions. have you nothing to add??? asking questions like yours is the simplest thing in the world to do. can you suggest any solutions of your own to your questions or is that the extent of your intellect?

Do you have any idea of what size limit would be applied to the stores in this scheme?

its obvious that it would apply best to the four main multiples, regardless of size. this is where most people shop. you want to help most people. you want to help the mean.

What would it cost to keep it updated?

It would have to cost less than it costs the staff to change the prices in the store but im afraid i dont work in the retail sector, so i dont know for certain. i imagine with a little goodwill (or legal obligation) the organisations could email their price lists to the site every day for the cost of attaching a document to an email. how much does that cost? millions im sure. im not sure if tesco has email.

Any store can show a price of 1p for everything, as an advertised price is not binding so how would that be policed?

a bookie does not have to pay out on a bet legally either. if they are *****, they are *****. what can you do? if we are in the realm of creating a law to legally oblige retailers to forward their live price data to a portal, then why not fix that problem as well? i dont know why that is anyway. do you think that it would be good for business to show everything costs 1p? :rolleyes:

Come on, people are posing questions and it behoves you to flesh out the idea as a result.

i'm behoved to do f and all. id like to see people make a contribution but adding something constructive. id be curious to see if you could answer any of your own questions. that might be constructive.

asd

mylastparadigm

Guy:Incognito wrote: »

It was your idea that every single shop in the country is forced by law to participate. Thats a fairly open and shut case. Whether the idea is at the formative stage or not it falls down right there. It's unworkable. There are hundreds or small shops all around the country, but even if theres only 1 that cant cope with the extra, thats the idea dead. Thats before you even think about the likes of Tesco and the sheer size of the operation for them.

Theres nothing wrong with a voluntary site for whoever wants to participate and thats all it ever should be.

so i just changed it! due to the wonderful feed back i recieved! now i think the main multiples will do. am i allowed to do that? am i doomed to run with this idea forever because i get it wrong first time? oh, it was in the OP so its in concrete. you are a funny man.

Bandana boy

You need to get less defensive
It was an interesting idea that has been shot down for numerous reasons ranging from Legal to cost to practicality to not having any real benefit.

From my reading you have more than enough data to show the idea is a non starter probably time to move on.

mylastparadigm

Bandana boy wrote: »

You need to get less defensive
It was an interesting idea that has been shot down for numerous reasons ranging from Legal to cost to practicality to not having any real benefit.

From my reading you have more than enough data to show the idea is a non starter probably time to move on.

legal? yeah, that was always an issue. not news to me.

cost? no one came up with anything there other than to ask the cost. how is that a fatal blow? my estimate of the cost is the price of an email and the 10 seconds it takes to attach a file to said email.

practicality? thats covered in costs above and in my last one or two posts.

no real benefit? eh, that other site with feck all items showed that you could save 10% on a sample shopping trip. eh, i think that counts as a real benefit.

maybe i should insert a snarky comment here but i dont think you will read it because evidently, you haven read anything to here. so fro.

skinny90

mylastparadigm wrote: »

Bandana boy wrote: »

You need to get less defensive
It was an interesting idea that has been shot down for numerous reasons ranging from Legal to cost to practicality to not having any real benefit.

From my reading you have more than enough data to show the idea is a non starter probably time to move on.

legal? yeah, that was always an issue. not news to me.

cost? no one came up with anything there other than to ask the cost. how is that a fatal blow? my estimate of the cost is the price of an email and the 10 seconds it takes to attach a file to said email.

practicality? thats covered in costs above and in my last one or two posts.

no real benefit? eh, that other site with feck all items showed that you could save 10% on a sample shopping trip. eh, i think that counts as a real benefit.

maybe i should insert a snarky comment here but i dont think you will read it because evidently, you haven read anything to here. so fro.

It's not as simple as emailing it,unless dunnes tesco have direct access to the system where they upload directly.the cost of developing a system will be pricey...maintenance also,how will the system cope with updates/new products.products that no longer exist.lets just say this was launched and by law the shops had to contribute.
Do you think it would have implications with business's perhaps thinking of setting up in Ireland...and ultimately be a deciding factor not to invest.

mylastparadigm

skinny90 wrote: »

It's not as simple as emailing it,unless dunnes tesco have direct access to the system where they upload directly.the cost of developing a system will be pricey...maintenance also,how will the system cope with updates/new products.products that no longer exist.lets just say this was launched and by law the shops had to contribute.
Do you think it would have implications with business's perhaps thinking of setting up in Ireland...and ultimately be a deciding factor not to invest.

surely each store gets an electronic notice of prices. how else could it be done? carrier pidgeon?

the data is all in the register. so its on a server in the store. the lads print out this file when they are changing prices instore. email this file. done. thats all the obligation the store would have. whatever it costs on the other end to put the data online is unavoidable.

if this idea worked and consumeres used it enmass to get the best prices, competition would be excellent. who needs more retailers then?

Bandana boy

mylastparadigm wrote: »

legal? yeah, that was always an issue. not news to me.

cost? no one came up with anything there other than to ask the cost. how is that a fatal blow? my estimate of the cost is the price of an email and the 10 seconds it takes to attach a file to said email.

practicality? thats covered in costs above and in my last one or two posts.

no real benefit? eh, that other site with feck all items showed that you could save 10% on a sample shopping trip. eh, i think that counts as a real benefit.

maybe i should insert a snarky comment here but i dont think you will read it because evidently, you haven read anything to here. so fro.

Legal -Pricing is an invitation to treat not a contract, so any advertised price could not be enforced

Cost -this will have a cost ,supermarket retailing is already one of the lowest margin bussinesses out there,the companies will not absorb this but pass it on to the consumer.The actual cost of this would run into the millions for each retailer.The cost to manage it from some goverment body will also run into the millions.THe cost of a website allowing these comparisons from the data being fed in is not simple and will have a cost.

Practicality.How do we price buy one get one free offers how do we price limited availability items.How do we decide which stores are "big" enough to have to comply,with all the exceptions you will need to allow for these fast paced bussiness to survive it makes the data not practical.

No real benefit.Do you believe that the already tiny margins that these companies make will decrease? The market is already very good at driving the behaviour of the suppliers.No benefit has been mentioned in the thread that has not been shot down by the increased costs or indiference of the market to your suggestion.

It was an interesting idea ,but not all ideas are good ideas.
you have got significant feedback of all the problems of your idea, yet your response to these has been chilidsh and defensive.
I see this alot in R&D where an idea needs root and branch rework but the designer is blinded by the rejection of his intial premise.

My post was not attacking you yet look at your response, to accuse me of not having read through the thread, which despite your claims of not being sarky is in my eyes very sarky.
You accuse me of not reading the thread yet your are again ignoring all of the considered responses to your thread.

Are all of the problems with this idea unfixable?
In their current format ,Yes.
The real ingenuity would come from addressing those points and an innovative solution to those would be the real innovation here.

tomdublin

dudara wrote: »

I just came across this site today - how does this match up with your idea?

http://www.fitthebill.ie/

This website doesn't seem to do anything....weird that someone has actually managed to design it so badly. Industry-funded comparison websites emerge whenever there is real competition in a given sector. The problem is that in Ireland grocery stores don't really compete apart from a few exceptions. There are too many opportunities for unofficial price fixing, too many government regulations that curb competition and a rigged supply chain. Also due in part of a restrictive planning system and huge rents, taxes, charges and overheads the spatial concentration of competing supermarkets is very low so that many consumers have only one or two options realistically available to them.

Guy:Incognito

mylastparadigm wrote: »

so i just changed it! due to the wonderful feed back i recieved! now i think the main multiples will do. am i allowed to do that? am i doomed to run with this idea forever because i get it wrong first time? oh, it was in the OP so its in concrete. you are a funny man.

Why am I funny? I asked questions and the read is now running to nearly 100 posts because you just skipped over bits and wouldnt answer.

Right so you've changed it. So now we're discriminating against big shops are we? Are they still to be reguired by law to put all their prices online and keep it updated daily or are you changing that too? It's not practical in any case.


It will and should only ever work on a voluntary participation basis and going by the fact its not already running, the shops themselves dont have an interest in doing it.

Corruptedmorals

mylastparadigm wrote: »

surely each store gets an electronic notice of prices. how else could it be done? carrier pidgeon?

the data is all in the register. so its on a server in the store. the lads print out this file when they are changing prices instore. email this file. done. thats all the obligation the store would have. whatever it costs on the other end to put the data online is unavoidable.

if this idea worked and consumeres used it enmass to get the best prices, competition would be excellent. who needs more retailers then?

The data is sent from head office, each store has citrix as400 (in dunnes case..I'd say tesco uses it also) and they update the batch file. It's a simple 'Batch file sent yes/no' thing. You can't really see in this case what exactly is being updated. That is done in a seperate option, mark ups/price changes/offers, with sheets to print off and go around and change the SEL's from. Supermarkets would not want that data on show because they highlight the old price, the new price, the price difference. Essentially you'd have to tinker with the system to have a seperate set of data that DOES list all of the products at their current prices (updates etc. will only show up changes anyway) without showing any devious price difference. People already despise noticing price differences in their weekly shop- the rip off ireland forum is full of it.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

skinny90 wrote: »

It's not as simple as emailing it,unless dunnes tesco have direct access to the system where they upload directly.the cost of developing a system will be pricey...maintenance also,how will the system cope with updates/new products.products that no longer exist.lets just say this was launched and by law the shops had to contribute.
Do you think it would have implications with business's perhaps thinking of setting up in Ireland...and ultimately be a deciding factor not to invest.

I agree fully. He admits to not knowing the retail business and doesn't seem to understand databases or IT either.What is proposed would cost huge money.
Development alone would be in the range of 6 to 20 million depending on complexity and frequency of input.

I still wonder who would actually take the time to check their entire grocery list and then shop somewhere other than their usual store. I also see difficulty with regional price diffferences and stock lists among the large store.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

mylastparadigm wrote: »

... email this file. done. thats all the obligation the store would have. whatever it costs on the other end to put the data online is unavoidable.

But who would pay the price? The consumer would!

looksee

The idea was that this would be a service run by civil servants. At the moment the civil service is being reduced in all kinds of vital areas, but the OP wants the government to divert people to collate supermarket prices?

As has already been said, shoppers find a supermarket that is convenient, suits their lifestyle and provides what they want.

Price is important but not to the extent that I am going to sit at my computer looking up the price of every item I propose to purchase and creating spreadsheets of which I will buy where. The amount I would save would be easily outweighed by the amount I would spend on petrol and the time I would spend going from shop to shop.

Add in the aggravation factor of having to load and unload children in and out of a vehicle multiple times, keep chilled and frozen food cold on this extended shopping trip and use my card multiple times to pay in different places and it is getting harder to see why I would be bothered!

Where I live I have a choice of Tesco, Lidl and Supervalue. I don't need to check a computer to know pretty well what they stock and which has the best value.

mylastparadigm

Lorenzo Glamorous Bird wrote: »

Development alone would be in the range of 6 to 20 million depending on complexity and frequency of input.

really? explain that one would you?

you are talking ****e. are you from notrealistan?

revenue get the pos data on an audit on a usb key. i suppose that cost 100 million to set up.

mylastparadigm

Lorenzo Glamorous Bird wrote: »

But who would pay the price? The consumer would!

consumer always pays. but if you knew the cheapest prices he would pay less.

skinny90

mylastparadigm wrote: »

consumer always pays. but if you knew the cheapest prices he would pay less.

so with the implementation of this idea,customers will pay an increased amount per item...but hey at least this system will be able to tell the customer where to pay the cheapest increased price :rolleyes:

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

skinny90 wrote: »

so with the implementation of this idea,customers will pay an increased amount per item...but hey at least this system will be able to tell the customer where to pay the cheapest increased price :rolleyes:

My point exactly. He just doesn't seem to get the economics of the whole thing. This type of process costs big bucks and ultimately the customer will have to carry the cost.
How that happens hasn't been explained by the OP, as he says the stores won't pay it. If not the stores then is it the State and that's a joke in the current financial crisis!)? In which case everybody pays even if we don't use the stores, or the on-line database. Does this make sense?

juan.kerr

Does this scheme take account of own brands? Most of the chains (even Spar) have multiple own brand ranges, and much of the Aldi / Lidl stock is not the big name brands.

As such how would price comparison work? Is it based on barcode for 'Bachelors 225 gramme Low Salt Baked Beans', or all Baked Beans?

skinny90

juan.kerr wrote: »

Does this scheme take account of own brands? Most of the chains (even Spar) have multiple own brand ranges, and much of the Aldi / Lidl stock is not the big name brands.

As such how would price comparison work? Is it based on barcode for 'Bachelors 225 gramme Low Salt Baked Beans', or all Baked Beans?

thats only the start of the problems....what about the promotional multipacks wit 2-3 or 4 in a pack

mathepac

Lorenzo Glamorous Bird wrote: »

... He just doesn't seem to get the economics of the whole thing. ...

Great so as you understand the economics of the whole thing, maybe you'd explain to us non-insiders / non-economists how they work. Thanks.

Lorenzo Glamorous Bird wrote: »

... This type of process costs big bucks and ultimately the customer will have to carry the cost. ...

Reading the posts from insiders it sounds like the IT systems employed by at least one of the multiple are in need of a kick up the backside into the 21st century. The cost of building this facility (remember retail price information only by branch) would more than off-set the cost of replacing the 1960's setup I've heard described above.

juan.kerr wrote: »

Does this scheme take account of own brands? Most of the chains (even Spar) have multiple own brand ranges, and much of the Aldi / Lidl stock is not the big name brands...

Very flattering; you speak as is this were a fully-formed concept rather than an idea being kicked around (literally) on the interweb.

Price comparisons are done on an equivalency basis. If no equivalent appears for an item in other shops, then no comparison is made. The price of lederhosen in ALDI would not bear a realistic comparison with track-suit bottoms in Dunnes, for example.

juan.kerr wrote: »

... As such how would price comparison work? Is it based on barcode for 'Bachelors 225 gramme Low Salt Baked Beans', or all Baked Beans?

Equivalency based on some heuristics that should not be too difficult to master. None of it is difficult in reality other than getting buy-in and over-coming the baffling negativity of consumers and shop-workers.

The thinking seems to be "large number of products" = complexity, which is not true, or "large number of pricing options" = complexity, which is not true either.

Multi-packs, BOGOFFs etc could be handled by high-lighting the prices with a "Special-offer" flash on the pricing screen opposite the basic product or even bar-coding the repackaged multi-packs as in done for inners and outers currently.

mathepac

I've now located three modern POS systems that claim to do pretty much what we want (run tills, do receipts, stock control, returns, promos, offers, back office and publish prices to the web as well as updating till pricing in real time (as an option or for a from/to date as an option for special offers), order stocks automatically from central locations or direct from local suppliers, tally receipts daily / by shift / by employee and all the other basic stuff. They also update prices and stocks in real time (rather than batching them daily / weekly) and sound like they might have more a modern design than what some posters have experienced.

I'm downloading a demo of one at the moment for a gawk.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

The bottom line still is: Would the consumerr use it and would they be willing to change their purchasing habits as a result?

I did a straw poll here (admittedly only 22 homes involed) and 8 said they'd have a look at it if it were to come to pass. The rest said no - that they have a decent idea already of where the cheapest basket is and either already shop there or shop elsewhere because it suits them for many other reasons. Only 3 said they would consider splitting their shopping between stores to get a cheaper product.

Is there a demand for the product?

mathepac

Lorenzo Glamorous Bird wrote: »

... Is there a demand for the product?

I have no idea. Fair play for conducting the straw poll with you neighbours; people are probably more price-conscious now than ever in the last few years with food prices sky-rocketing (but hey the farmer's are happy, so all is well with FG & FF)

I picked up OP's suggestion / question a couple of days ago and looked at it from a personal as well as a techical perspective Given cooperation it is definitely technically do-able, and personally I would find it useful because I don't have the luxury of being able to "pop out for a few messages" more than once a week.

Is there a meerkat, who is the customer (apart from me), what will it cost, is it a school project, etc. These are all perfectly good questions, but honestly the wave of aggressive negativity verging on abuse that a simple idea has generated is beyond belief.

I like the idea and I've already mapped an architecture for it as well as an initial data-base design and I believe it would be useful now or even 3 years ago.

I still think it's a consumer issue (even though consumers here and your neighbours seem not to agree) and worth investigating further.

If mods allow I'll report back on the POS system I found without identifying it.

MOH

mathepac wrote: »

Is there a meerkat, who is the customer (apart from me), what will it cost, is it a school project, etc. These are all perfectly good questions, but honestly the wave of aggressive negativity verging on abuse that a simple idea has generated is beyond belief.

The OP posed an idea and asked for comments. A lot of people put time into responding, many thinking it was a bad idea, with clear explanations for why they thought that way.

The OP chose to ignore most of these reasons, instead resorting to sarcasm, hyperbole, and telling people "they know f all".

Is it any wonder people then started being a bit negative towards it?


Back on topic, I still think it's a lot more difficult than it might seem. Merging data feeds in different formats from different suppliers is always a pain. Even once you find a common structure, you're going to be faced with the possibility that each feed structure is going to change in the future to accommodate internal organisational requirements.
And that's just getting the data in. Something as simple as identifying the same product across different feeds is not as straightforward as it seems (yes, you can use the EAN codes, *if* all the feeds include them), and that's before you get into heuristics to try to determine whether differing products should be considered equivalent.

Of course, I'm just a ranting lunatic, since the OP has already dismissed any such concerns - sure it's only a matter of Tesco sending an e-mail every day :rolleyes: .

mathepac

For me, the idea of starting out with branded products was to identify and overcome any difficulty in identifying and matching the prices for branded stuff as these most likely will have EAN / UPCs that identify them uniquely given they come from multinationals.

Locally sourced / unique / own-brands are a bit more of a challenge but with a bit of work, equivalencies can be devised. I've done some work in this area in other industries, mainly manufacturing, but not for milk and bread and buns.

One large outfit I worked in had 60+ part-numbers for the same nut-and-bolt, with some places buying the nuts and bolts individually and having an in-house assembly operation to build a "semi-finished" item for delivery to an assembly line where the first thing the operative did was disassemble the nut and bolt for use to hold the panels on a product. Ah sure, them were the days Jem, them were the days.

Sorry lost half the post.

If the retail price for 10kg bags of roosters changes to €5.99, then a single transaction updates the data-set used by the consumer terminals for "ALL" that multiples shops or for designated outlets. This has nothing to do with internal organisational data-flows in my mind; it's an external matter and not subject to change willy-nilly by the data-contributor (multiple).

MOH

mathepac wrote: »

If the retail price for 10kg bags of roosters changes to €5.99, then a single transaction updates the data-set used by the consumer terminals for "ALL" shops or for designated outlets. This has nothing to do with internal organisational data-flows in my mind; it's an external matter and not subject to change willy-nilly by the data-contributor (multiple).

So then are you saying it's up to the stores to send price updates in a predefined common format?
So they bear the cost of setting up a process to extract updates from their own internal system and format it appropriately?

(Bit confused by the terminals, are we not still on the idea of a central website people can check? )

mathepac

The data-set used for the web-site is still accessible by the shop-based terminals - it's the same data-set, just accessed by a different device in "kiosk-mode". When not being used by a shopper, the terminals can show ads, special offers, etc. They can even run ads for suppliers for a fee. Smart-phone, smart-tellies etc can also access the data.

My idea is to have "global" price changes initiated from a central location; local price-changes in reaction to competition / stock-related issues / eol / short-dating can be initiated locally and sent in the opposite direction once approved, back to HQ.

Making up your shopping list would produce a picking list specific to that shop where a floor-layout (printed or using the GPS tracking on your smart-phone) could guide you to the items on your list, obviously routing you past as many high-value, heavily promoted items as possible (given that non-chilled / non-frozen / non-dairy staples are moved as often as possible).

There can be all sorts of incentives built into this idea that work for the retailers; it can't be anti-retailer. The idea is to get as many shoppers as possible into the shops; a sort of quid pro quo and a few quid for me.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Sorry, I'm getting confused here.

1. Are we talking about a Web Site that the consumer can access at home or a kiosk style arrangement in a store. If the latter, then what is the point and have we not gone completely off topic?

2. Is this still a Consumers Issue item or are we now in the realms of science and technology?

mathepac

mathepac wrote: »

The data-set used for the web-site is still accessible by the shop-based terminals - it's the same data-set, just accessed by a different device in "kiosk-mode". ...

I'm afraid I can't make it any simpler than the sentence above. For data-driven applications (banking, shopping, car-hire, video-rentals, manufacturing planning for example) at the core is the data-set / data-base and the web-site is merely the window through which a user / customer views and uses data that are of interest to him / her. Without the data, the web-site is useless, without the web-site it's difficult to distribute access to the data (not impossible but more difficult. Think of smart-phones, tellies, terminals, home-based PCs or lap-tops as being ways (using the web-site) of accessing the data.

I see this as a consumer issue, but I've mooted ways to make it potentially attractive and perhaps cost effective to retailers.

mylastparadigm

mathepac wrote: »

I'm afraid I can't make it any simpler than the sentence above. For data-driven applications (banking, shopping, car-hire, video-rentals, manufacturing planning for example) at the core is the data-set / data-base and the web-site is merely the window through which a user / customer views and uses data that are of interest to him / her. Without the data, the web-site is useless, without the web-site it's difficult to distribute access to the data (not impossible but more difficult. Think of smart-phones, tellies, terminals, home-based PCs or lap-tops as being ways (using the web-site) of accessing the data.

I see this as a consumer issue, but I've mooted ways to make it potentially attractive and perhaps cost effective to retailers.

thanks for your support mat.