Consumer Council conducted supermarket price surveys in 2014 and nearly 400,000 price data were surveyed. Starting January 2015, over 100 supermarkets are included in the survey, and the Council will enhance the functions of the ‘Supermarket Price Information Platform’ mobile phone app to ensure consumers have easy access to supermarket price data.
The Council extended the survey coverage in 2013 from conducting its monthly survey at over 10 supermarkets to 97 supermarkets. The survey included 13 categories of products, namely rice, cooking oil, noodles, milk powder, household cleansing products, etc., which amounted to around 340 commodities. The Council surveyed nearly 400,000 price data last year, of which over 380,000 price data were surveyed from the monthly supermarket price surveys and over 8,000 data were surveyed from the specific price surveys. In order to let the consumers have easy access to the tens of thousands supermarket price data surveyed monthly, the Council has enhanced its website and the functions of the ‘Supermarket Price Information Platform’ mobile phone app. The ‘Supermarket Price Information Platform’ focuses on the price differences of the surveyed commodities and consumers can make use of the functions such as ‘Supermarket Price Watch’, ‘Rankings for Supermarkets with Lowest Prices’, ‘Rankings of Products with Price Differences of over 50%’, ‘Shopping Basket’ and ‘Specific Product Price Platform’ to make comparisons according to their shopping preferences.
The Council states that more and more consumers have made use of the Council’s website and the ‘Supermarket Price Information Platform’ mobile phone app to make comparisons. Since its launch, the iPhone app has been downloaded for nearly 50,000 times, and has a browsing record of over 2.55 million hits. For the Android version, it has been downloaded for nearly 40,000 times, and has a browsing record of over 3 million hits. In 2014, the download record for both the iPhone and Android ‘Supermarket Price Information Platform’ mobile phone apps had a total of around 20,000 times. This reflects the popularity of the apps among the consumers and the price data uploaded on the apps have been widely used.
As it is quite common for consumers to make their purchase at supermarkets, there is a trend for the continuous increase in the number of supermarkets. The Council foresees that the number of supermarkets included in the ‘Supermarket Price Survey’ will increase accordingly. Since January 2015, the number of supermarkets being surveyed has increased to 101, and the Council will continue to conduct surveys by parishes, at 8 times a month. The surveyed price data will be compared and uploaded on the ‘Supermarket Price Information Platform’ mobile phone apps for consumers’ reference.
For enquiry, please call 89889315.
