This was a really interesting read! I find it so tiresome trying to evaluate food prices and optimize grocery shopping to optimize [time and money spent], and a large data set like this could make it much easier. Is anyone aware of a similar price analysis for the United States?
Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites
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Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites
#12[flagged]
Supermarkets are colluding to increase prices as all companies are wont to do. There isn’t enough competition to act as downward pressure on prices.
This isn’t a monetary thing that YouTube says - the goods a few miles away in Germany aren’t seeing this, despite being in the same currency and no difficulty transporting them. In a free market a competitor would buy from the same supplier the german supermarket does, undercut the competition and force all prices for.
However that doesn’t work because consumers in Austria don’t realise how they are being ripped off, because while the large corporation has all the data to manipulate and extract maximum revenue from each consumers the consumer lacks the data to do the opposite.
Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites
#13“asymmetric information warfare” I think that’s a great term in explaining how “the free market” doesn’t work.
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Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites
#14To check price of items in Austria, the website is here: https://heisse-preise.io/ Browsing around, the prices look very reasonable and inexpensive to me. For example, 500 g bag of peanuts is 4.59 euros, the price has fluctuated between 3.39 to 5.59 euros over the years. Peanuts name is “Kelly's Erdnüsse geröstet & gesalzen”
That is ridiculous expensive for peanuts.
Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites
#15Potatos ( in or outside supermarket, large bags ) have literally doubled in price YoY in NL.
I get 5kg instead of 10kg for the same price. Same month, last year.
Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites
#16Truly shows how Free Markets are the most efficient
That's nice if we forget about the ECB printing money like there's no tomorrow.
Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites
#17Had a "oh shit" moment reading the article. I live in Germany, and of course buy groceries. The "discount" games seem very obvious now. Food expenses have risen very significantly recently. Great article, I hope this gains more traction and or legal ramifications for the grocers.
One trick I noticed while doing data input for supermarkets (in a different market) is that price rises are always advertised as promotions. Say a supermarket has a $1.10 item and they want to increase that product to $1.50. They'll up the price to $1.50 immediately, and add a "40c off" to the ticket. The consumer sees "promotion" and assumes it's a discount, when it's actually just the same price as usual. Then ~2 w…
Now in Poland every promotion needs to display lowest price for the product in last 30 days l, effectively countering this strategy.
Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites
#18Had a "oh shit" moment reading the article. I live in Germany, and of course buy groceries. The "discount" games seem very obvious now. Food expenses have risen very significantly recently. Great article, I hope this gains more traction and or legal ramifications for the grocers.
One trick I noticed while doing data input for supermarkets (in a different market) is that price rises are always advertised as promotions. Say a supermarket has a $1.10 item and they want to increase that product to $1.50. They'll up the price to $1.50 immediately, and add a "40c off" to the ticket. The consumer sees "promotion" and assumes it's a discount, when it's actually just the same price as usual. Then ~2 w…
Pretty much not for me. I both have a bunch of products imported from receipts over the years, and I remember many per 100g prices for products I regularly buy. This simply does not happen, at least not at the stores I shop for the products I buy (note that I don’t buy any finished meals or processed food outside the occasional salami, so my habits are pretty different from most people).
Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites
#19Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites
#20Truly shows how Free Markets are the most efficient
If food and housing gets too expensive, then sorry mate, nothing we can do about it, that's just how the free market™ works, try working harder.
But when labor gets too expensive pushing wages up, then it's no longer the free market, but it's a "labor shortage" catastrophe all over the media and we have to shed tears about the poor business owners wo can't afford a second Porsche, so immigration gets turbocharged until wages come down to their desired levels that businesses can agree is "fair".