Shopping cheaply: its not always how it seems

Shopping for food on a budget is actually quite a complex thing to do. Supermarkets are masters at ensuring that direct comparisons between products are difficult to make. Promotions are used very well to confuse us further — is the buy two get one free a better deal than the 33% off. Sometimes, we just can’t resist what appears to be a bargain even if we didn’t initially plan to buy it. Supermarkets are the best at this and they do it extremely well. ‘Every little helps’ or ‘ASDA price’ are all thrown at us to make us think that we are saving money whenever we shop there.

Contrast this with the overtly middle class shopping of the independent shop or farmers market. Most commonly frequented by the well-healed, its not the offers which get us, its the quality. Its the thought that we are getting something better than we would do in the supermarket. Socially, these are where the cache sit. But how expensive are they really when you compare them to a supermarket shop?

Well, one of our readers, inspired by our recent guest blog The Shoppers Dilemma, took on the challenge to make a list and review the cost in three different shops. We have shared their experience below.

It proved to be quite an undertaking, but with list prepared I was lucky to find a wholefood shop with a huge variety of lines.

The shopping experience was excellent. It was largely self-service but with shop assistants around who seemed genuinely delighted to be of help. Almost all the products on the list were available although some of them had to be organic. There was no hassle, the whole affair was easy and with two full baskets of products I arrived at the check-out desk. The total bill was £105.79. Job done and home.

Now the interesting bit. From exhaustive research on the Waitrose and Tesco websites the price comparison with an upmarket supermarket and a discounting supermarket proved quite a revelation. The up-market supermarket carried most of the same products, but had I shopped there it would have cost me an additional £33.70 or 23% more. As for Tesco which is a mid-market supermarket it failed to offer some of the purchased products and so inferior lines were substituted. Even so the price comparison only showed that I would have saved £3.36 or 3% by going there.

To be able to buy better quality products, to experience a much more friendly and attentive shopping environment, and to be able to do a quicker less fuse shop seems to me to be worth every penny of the £3.36 extra I had spent.

It all goes to show that shopping can be turned on its head, and we don’t have to fall for the high pressure salesmanship of the impersonal supermarket. And on top of that, as I had made a list, I didn’t get sucked in to making impulse buys!

So maybe it is time to challenge the image we have of these difference shopping experiences. We all love a good deal, but as the saying goes, “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is” and in the case of the supermarket’s mega deals, chances are you won’t be getting out of there with a small bill.

Thanks for reading!

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Originally published at shrinkthesupplychain.com on December 17, 2014.