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Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites

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Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites

#211

Post by woodson »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #186
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse me, but what expensive regulation and high grocery store workers' taxation are you talking about that's responsible for making prices so much higher than in Germany?

In Germany while the taxes for a typical full time grocery store worker would be higher, Germany has an extraordinary amount of "mini jobber" working in grocery stores which drives down the cost. Expensive regulation is for instance the Ladenzeitgesetz which restricts a retailer to a regulated number of hours a week with very little freedom to operate the business. Stores need to close before 9, are only allowed to o…

You’re saying there is no equivalent to Ladenzeitgesetz in Germany?

Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites

#212

Post by WirelessGigabit »

curiousgal wrote: post #207

What's the point of posting in English if the meat of the content (the screenshots) is not in English?

The meat is the text. The screenshots are examples.

And you don't need to understand German to see that in one photo it's 1.99€ for 1L of detergent, and now 1.89€ for .8L of the same detergent.

Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites

#213

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

woodson wrote: post #211
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany while the taxes for a typical full time grocery store worker would be higher, Germany has an extraordinary amount of "mini jobber" working in grocery stores which drives down the cost. Expensive regulation is for instance the Ladenzeitgesetz which restricts a retailer to a regulated number of hours a week with very little freedom to operate the business. Stores need to close before 9, are only allowed to o…

You’re saying there is no equivalent to Ladenzeitgesetz in Germany?

There is, but not nearly as restrictive. Stores can be open from at least 6 to 20 any day of the week other than Sunday and in most states in Germany, Sunday trading has been at least partially permitted.

In Austria you cannot even operate a fully automated grocery store (either by vending machines or something like Amazon Go) without being afoul of the regulation.

Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites

#214

Post by Permit »

jsdwarf wrote: post #195

Fellow Austrian here. Nice price comparison project, but the elephant in the room is that grocery store prices in Germany are 20-40% lower for the same product. Explanation from the supermarket chains are shady at best (more stores per capita compared to Germany, they are forced to buy from more expensive Austrian distributors etc). I heard similar things from Belgium (higher prices than in France) My point is: we ne…

> Explanation from the supermarket chains are shady at best

Do you suspect there is some other reason? Like, they can get away with it in Austria but not Germany? What’s a “non-shady” explanation in your eyes?

Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites

#215

Post by fbdab103 »

jonatron wrote: post #191
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #169

Governments should mandate published prices for all goods sold in supermarkets, it would be good for competition and almost trivial for the companies to publish CSV files with barcode, price, start and end dates. Of course doing do would be disastrous for the supermarkets, so I can imagine they would fight and lobby politicians vigorously.

Here's monthly CSV's from the UK Office for National Statistics: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/data... Doesn't have barcodes though.

That seems like a pretty significant limitation. Bulk entity matching is an art form outside of the scope of many. To enable meaningful comparisons, as many identifiers as possible need to be included.

Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites

#216

Post by paganel »

jsdwarf wrote: post #195

Fellow Austrian here. Nice price comparison project, but the elephant in the room is that grocery store prices in Germany are 20-40% lower for the same product. Explanation from the supermarket chains are shady at best (more stores per capita compared to Germany, they are forced to buy from more expensive Austrian distributors etc). I heard similar things from Belgium (higher prices than in France) My point is: we ne…

Related, I’m currently in Greece and the price of locally produced peaches is higher here than the price of the same Greek-produced peaches is in Romania (from where I’m from). Noticed it today and it blew my mind, not sure how the people of Greece put up with this bs (the price of gasoline is also way higher).

Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites

#217

Post by nebula8804 »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #26
michaelhoney wrote: post #2

This is a great thread, and it shows the power of smart, tech-capable citizens.

>it shows the power of smart, tech-capable citizens Consumers in Austria who travel abroad/to Germany often, already knew they were getting scammed for a long time now, but couldn't prove it and now they can, so the more important question is what will come out of it, as the data shows the big retailers clearly cooperating on price fixing. My guess, nothing, as the government regulators who are supposed to watch over…

Wow it feels as if you are writing about the US. Guess "the grass is always greener" and all that.

Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites

#218

Post by ahoka »

lostlastacc wrote: post #111

Only part i don't agree with is don't visit Austria. I had such a nice time there this summer, cant wait to go back. And everything is so cheap compared to Swedish grocery stores ..

I have checked a few things and everything other than milk and butter was more expensive in Austria (meat, flour, carrots). Do you have an example of what else is cheaper?

Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites

#219

Post by paulmd »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #198
jsdwarf wrote: post #195

Fellow Austrian here. Nice price comparison project, but the elephant in the room is that grocery store prices in Germany are 20-40% lower for the same product. Explanation from the supermarket chains are shady at best (more stores per capita compared to Germany, they are forced to buy from more expensive Austrian distributors etc). I heard similar things from Belgium (higher prices than in France) My point is: we ne…

Austria's real problem is that it's a bad business environment with high taxes and tons of regulation. It means that there are only a few players in that space that ultimately dominate it. Small companies could not even enter that space because the regulation does not give them any space to innovate (for instance free selection of products, other opening times).

More generally, the EU has problems with market efficiency in general. The law allowing mail-order businesses to refuse to sell across “state lines” means markets are very atomized and dominated by one or two players who, spoiler, don’t really compete aggressively on pricing.

The idea of Newegg refusing to sell to me because I don’t live in California is insane from an American perspective but that’s what the EU has to live with - mindfactory, komplett, etc will not ship across state lines. It’s a single market in name only, as far as distribution and sales. In practice the only “single market” is customs and currency, and even then there’s edge cases.

It is a very weird overall market where you have these strong consumer protections but also backed by low competitiveness in retail and distribution which leaves margins for supply chains to accommodate this.

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