Comments on: Choice Lashes Axing Of Grocery Comparison Site

By: Southpatt

Southpatt — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:01:11 +0000

Echo Liatechs comments.
The Big two monopolise and self regulate the grocery industry, to the point where not only the suppliers but now the government is afraid of them. No wonder they don’t want their price fixed baskets compared to some smaller chains

By: dave

dave — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:01:17 +0000

I don’t understand why the site was so suddenly dumped. Surely they could have delayed it and altered whatever was concerning them and then released?

I feel sorry for all the people who work for that Minister, you work on something for months and he decides to dump it in a hurry because he sees the media will be too busy with Michael Jackson’s death.

By: Angus Kidman

Angus Kidman — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:43:53 +0000

I never got the impression that GROCERYchoice aimed to make sure single supermarkets charged the same price in all branches — and in fact that’s economically unreasonable (prices should reflect input costs, which would vary based on rent, distance from supply centres etc.) The big complaint that showed up a lot was that it wouldn’t do in-area comparisons between different chains or price individual products, so you couldn’t find out (without hitting the stores yourself) if a tin of tuna was cheaper in (for example) the local ALDI, the local Woolies or the Coles two suburbs away.

By: liatach

liatach — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:51:12 +0000

The idea was to keep the supermarkets honest.
The minister backed down completely in the face of petty opposition from Coles, Franklin/woolies.
Tthe prices are available, contrary to the nonsense the minister spouted the other day, prices within the supermarket networks are centrally stored and updated for consistency (or more accurately, deliberate inconsistancy based upon economic status of the suburb) Australia wide.
It should have been a pretty simple operation, the biggest issue here is the horrendous amount of price variance between supermarkets of the same chain between suburbs. The very problem the site was aimed at addressing.

The ministers decision is a betrayal of his constituents.

By: Angus Kidman

Angus Kidman — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 06:02:46 +0000

The site was developed under contract, which probably specifies that the intellectual property is still owned by the government — Choice didn’t pay for the development and thus doesn’t own the rights. It could develop its own similar site, but would have a very hard time demonstrating that it wasn’t using government-owned IP in the process. It also probably couldn’t fund the ongoing research without a separate source of backing.

By: Sharanjit

Sharanjit — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:22:08 +0000

I’m confused. Why can’t Choice go ahead and launch their site on their own?

By: stephen

stephen — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:05:25 +0000

if people can’t keep a vague track of basic items are they really going to log on and pre check on a website?

I can’t believe we spent money on this in the first place, but if choice want to launch it and it won’t cost us any additional money then i would also let them.