Supermarkets close gap on food prices
That is according to the National Consumer Agency (NCA), which compared the prices on 92 everyday goods in Dunnes Stores, Tesco, Superquinn and SuperValu.
The survey revealed a price difference of just 3.4% between the cheapest and the most expensive retailer.
However, the NCA said Irish shoppers are fighting back against rising prices and displaying a new trait: That of the value-seeker.
Tesco and Dunnes were very close in prices at €262.37 and €262.41 respectively for the basket, a difference of just 4c or 0.02%, with Superquinn costing €3.44 or 1.3% more than the cheapest at €265.81.
Two SuperValu stores were surveyed, as the group does not operate a policy of national pricing. However, the results for the two stores differed by just 1c, leaving SuperValu with a minimum basket price of €271.26, 3.4% higher than the lowest basket price.
A survey in August last year found that between January 2009 and July 2010 grocery prices at the four supermarkets had fallen by 14%.
However, the latest survey found that prices are on the way up.
The cost of a basket of items from Tesco increased by 5.4% between July last year and June this year, while prices at Dunnes jumped 5.5% and by 5.7% at Superquinn. A similar price comparison is not available for SuperValu, as the NCA rotates the stores surveyed and SuperValu does not have a national pricing policy.
NCA chief executive Ann Fitzgerald said: “Last August, we observed that price matching appeared to be a feature of the Irish grocery market.
“The latest results suggest that this remains the case. In particular, it is striking that 37% of individual products surveyed had identical prices across all five retailers.
“Rather than seeing the emergence of a real champion of better value, we observe that grocery retailers in the Irish market remain tightly focused on matching, but not beating, the prices of their competitors.”
The NCA said that shoppers are buying more items on promotion and moving to own brand or private label equivalents.
The agency said this price sensitivity marks a departure for shoppers who, during the boom years, displayed very little of these value-seeking behaviours.
Retail Ireland said that the survey provides a “selective and incomplete picture” of grocery price trends.
Retail Ireland director Torlach Denihan said the survey focuses on a “narrow range of products” and does not adequately account for the large number of promotions that are increasingly a feature of the Irish market.
“One of the reasons why prices for some products have increased is due to very significant increases in global commodity and oil prices, which form part of the cost of many everyday grocery items,” he said.
“These global price trends are outside the control of Irish retailers and are due to well-documented factors, such as the shift from food production to the production of biofuels in some areas, poor harvests, export restrictions by food producers and the activities of speculators.”
The NCA said it would prefer a focus on everyday low pricing as a “consumer focused alternative to the high-low pricing associated with special offers and promotions”.
