The key point for me was the quote about asymetric information warfare, where it was impossible to know what the price of anything was until you were at the checkout. This used to be common on durable goods, professional services, and and big ticket items, but data science in retail has got it down to the micro level.
Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites
241–250 of 402 posts
Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites
#242And this is why scraping is under technical and legal attack. To maintain their panopticon, where they see all, while you get only a pinhole view of, in this case, the economy.
Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites
#243Governments 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.
Supermarkets seem like an undeserving target for this scrutiny. Profit margins for grocery stores are only 1-3%, so they're hardly engaging in price gouging. The average U.S. household spends less than 10% of its monthly budget on groceries and other food.[0] This number is half of what it was in the middle of the 20th Century, and probably lower than any time in history.[1] [0] https://www.valuepenguin.com/average-h…
This is true but housing cost has risen significantly (in percentage of spendable income) over time so there is an offset to play with here. You cannot take those basic costs alone.
Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites
#244If it's like the UK, there is so much "shrinkflation" (reduction in product size [and cheapening of ingredients]) that prices comparison is going to need per gram pricing. Identical looking packs now have extra air gaps: inflated chocolate bar wrappers, ice-cream cones with a 1cm gap below the lid, butter cartons have a recessed base, packages that formerly had straight sides now taper, etc. ... lots of these "tricks…
In the UK the supermarkets (I assume they have to by law) quote the weight of contents of a single unit of product (which is supposed to be total weight - packaging weight), so you could analyse this quite rapidly.
Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
>Austria's real problem is that it's a bad business environment with high taxes and tons of regulation. I feel that Canada has a similar problem.
It's obviously not as conducive to business as in the US. However, one advantage I can think of is that registering a new business in Canada takes only about a day.
Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites
#246If it's like the UK, there is so much "shrinkflation" (reduction in product size [and cheapening of ingredients]) that prices comparison is going to need per gram pricing. Identical looking packs now have extra air gaps: inflated chocolate bar wrappers, ice-cream cones with a 1cm gap below the lid, butter cartons have a recessed base, packages that formerly had straight sides now taper, etc. ... lots of these "tricks…
> that prices comparison is going to need per gram pricing Not entirely sure what you mean here, but we do have per gram pricing requirements (expressed in £/KG). EDIT: oh you mean that shrinkflation is so bad that £/gram will make more sense. Hah yeah The trouble is that grocers have figured out that if you fool the population in to using a 'loyalty' card, you can make everything a 'promotional price' and avoid the…
Just make a law that says that all returns have to be paid out at the £/KG listed.
Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites
#247Someone needs to make something like this for Canada.
Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
but in order to do that for groceries you have to open shops in austria which makes it much more difficult compared to products that can be sold online.
How hard is it to sell food out of a flower shop? Out of a candy store? A toy store? A gift shop? A coffee shop? A hardware store? There are retailers all over the country that could start selling food in no time flat. Starbucks is part of the Austrian grocery cartel too? And there's still no evidence that authorities are turning a blind eye to price fixing other than 'price go up.' Ask an Austrian hardware store own…
i am not sure i understand what your argument is, or what you think mine is.
your last sentence suggests that you don't believe that anyone can just undercut the big supermarket chains in austria. which is what i also don't believe.
but your first sentence is saying something different, so that has me confused.
Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites
#249If it's like the UK, there is so much "shrinkflation" (reduction in product size [and cheapening of ingredients]) that prices comparison is going to need per gram pricing. Identical looking packs now have extra air gaps: inflated chocolate bar wrappers, ice-cream cones with a 1cm gap below the lid, butter cartons have a recessed base, packages that formerly had straight sides now taper, etc. ... lots of these "tricks…
> that prices comparison is going to need per gram pricing Not entirely sure what you mean here, but we do have per gram pricing requirements (expressed in £/KG). EDIT: oh you mean that shrinkflation is so bad that £/gram will make more sense. Hah yeah The trouble is that grocers have figured out that if you fool the population in to using a 'loyalty' card, you can make everything a 'promotional price' and avoid the…
> The trouble is that grocers have figured out that if you fool the population in to using a 'loyalty' card, you can make everything a 'promotional price' and avoid the per-unit labelling requirements. They just show the £/KG price of the higher price. So now consumers can't easily compare. [0]
That is illegal in the Netherlands: You must advertise with the normal price. You can display the "promotional price" but it cannot be your main price. What they usually try is adding a "25% off with card" option next to it or with a second price card. You however CAN NOT be denied the discount in any way even if you do not subscribe! This is less easy to do online but offline the shop will have to give you the discount. There is one exception: b2b.
I complained about this when a liquor chain (gall & gall) started using their "card holder" prices as the regular prices on the cards and displayed the regular ones almost invisible (black text on blue background ...). They refused to provide the discount price to non card holders. Complained to the regulatory institution and got back to me that they were already looking into it. No fine was charged but the practice stopped after a few weeks.
edit: on a more HN note; if you use the apps for the discount of the stores they usually have an agree notice which includes, among other things, you can be tracked in the shop with the app. Never be logged in to those while in the shop (or ever).
Re: Tracking Austrian grocery prices by scraping store sites
#250I wish paying with the phone would not only transfer how much we paid where. I'd like to get more details like single item prices. This would enable us to track prices ourselves.
If you have loyalty/coupon apps for the store, sometimes they also give you digital receipts you can download. One day I will automate downloading the receipts and OCR-ing the items .