Coles and Woolworths have faced plenty of scrutiny over their in-store labels in recent years, and now the country’s supermarkets are being told to do better when it comes to unit pricing.
As the cost-of-living crisis really started to pinch shoppers, unit pricing has increasingly been used to work out if Australians are getting the best bang for their buck. A unit price allows people to compare a price listed for a set unit of measurement.
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For example, if you had a 1 kilogram bag of rice worth $4.50 and a 5 kilogram gram bag of rice worth $19 you could easily see you’d be paying 45 cents per 100 grams with the smaller option, and 38 cents for the bulk buy.
Well at least that’s what it’s meant to do.
New research from consumer advocacy group CHOICE found that nearly four in 10 shoppers found the units of measurements were inconsistent.
In one example, one vanilla extract product sold in Woolworths was listed as $1.28 for 10ml but a similar product was listed as $5.93 for 100ml, meaning shoppers are left to do their own maths in the aisle to work out what’s cheapest.
The same amount of people found the unit pricing was too hard to read, largely because it’s much smaller than the actual price.
CHOICE said more frustrated shoppers were sending in examples of “unit pricing done badly”.
CHOICE policy advisor Bea Sherwood said they’d seen a decline in how useful people found what has been a “valuable tool to save on groceries”.
“We’ve also seen an increase in people reporting labelling issues at the supermarket, including inconsistent units of measurement, inconsistent formats, or labels that are too small or difficult to read,” Sherwood said.
As part of their ongoing supermarket reform, the federal government has committed to improving rules for unit pricing, which Sherwood welcomed.
“The government’s consultation paper to improve unit pricing rules is a positive step towards helping consumers make more informed decisions,” he said.
“We hope the consultation leads to stronger rules to crack down on supermarkets doing the wrong thing and undermining the consumer’s ability to choose the best value product.”
The government announced last month that it was releasing a consultation paper outlining options to improve unit pricing.
Which Australian supermarket is the cheapest?
CHOICE has been tracking the price of groceries at Australian supermarkets since March last year with its quarterly government-funded report.
The Albanese government said the quarterly report would improve the transparency of grocery prices and make it easier for shoppers to tell where the cheapest deals are.
Last month, Aldi was again declared the cheapest supermarket, with at $55.34 for the full basket of 15 items without specials.
Coles followed at $56.75, Woolworths at $57.20 and IGA at $65.56.
They took a special look at home branded items.
Looking just at the home-brand items, Aldi also took top spot at $20.08, followed by Coles at $21.30, Woolworths at $21.40, and IGA at $23.89.
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This article originally appeared on Yahoo Finance AU at https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/choice-finds-glaring-issue-with-coles-and-woolworths-aisle-feature-meant-to-help-struggling-aussies-024215281.html
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