The ease of comparing prices on the Internet has done a lot to do away with major price differences between individual items at retailers, whether online or off. But where they still get you is when you buy many items from the same store and you throw in the high-margin coffee with the cut-rate shampoo. Higher-priced single items, such as a digital camera or an MP3 player, lend themselves more to online research. Finding the best deal is just a matter of selecting your preferred comparison shopping site (Shopping.com, mySimon, etc.). But what happens when you want to compare an entire cart of groceries across several merchants? Put simply, you are out of luck. Unless of course you happen to be living in the UK and making good use of mySupermarket.
mySupermarket, which has been around since 2006, claims to be the first comparison service that allows users to compare a cart of multiple items across retailers—in its case, groceries, across British supermarket chains Tesco, Sainsbury’s Ocado & ASDA.
It can compare not only identical items (a one-liter bottle of Coke), but also similar non-identical items, such one-liter bottles of mineral water from two separate brands. To accomplish this, mySupermarket classified 100,000 grocery products sold online in the UK according to multiple criteria and sub-criteria. The rules, weightings and relationships between different sub-criteria are incorporated into the company’s algorithms.
Up-to-date pricing is achieved using a combination of proprietary crawlers and manual validation processes to access real time prices from the supermarkets’ own sites. MySupermarket marries those prices with its own image database. It obtains products from the manufacturers and retailers and then uses in-house image production combined with post-processing facilities in Thailand.
The company claims an average online grocery cart includes approximately 50 items, with a total cost of 80-110 English pounds ($160-$220). By finding savings for consumers that average 20 percent per cart, and consumers accepting about half those recommendations, the actual savings average around 10 pounds ($20) per cart.
The way mySupermarket works is that users login to mySupermarket and fill-up a “trolley” (British for “shopping cart”). They are then presented with three types of recommendations:
1. Potential savings from switching the entire cart to another supermarket.
2. Potential savings from swapping items in the cart to alternatives from within the same supermarket.
3. Health conscious recommendations (calories, saturates, fat, salt, sugar) for swapping items to healthier alternatives.
The final step—payment—is actually performed on the desired supermarket’s own payment page. It should be noted that the service is absolutely free to consumers.
So where does mySupermarket derive its revenue from? Two sources: The first, targeted advertising based on the cart’s contents.
The second, a data service provided to the retailers and merchants which includes price listings, inventory listings (by zipcode), as well as comparison and analysis of products sold within the UK grocery sector. These days mySupermarket is focusing on expanding its UK business, as well as adding features, ad/promotion services and data reporting capabilities.
They are also considering requests to license their technology for non-grocery multi-item comparison shopping.
Wow, I’d use something like that in the US if I could. That’s a great idea.
seriously? who has time to fart around w/ something like this? What am I going to save, $5 on my $90 grocery bill? total waste of time.
@TechcrunchBook, I would say this is hand to most people who do basially the same shop every week. I am one, we buy practically the same things every week so if I spend one evening doing this and get just $5 off my bill then I’ve saved $260 a year.
Holy Crap David Oxley, you could take your family on vacation with that. I’d venture to guess I’ve wasted more than $260 worth of my time tooling around with this rather than just going to the store and getting it over with.
$260 !! that is a lot of savings…every dollar counts
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I figure the target audience of British family shoppers will probably not lose money by using this site, I don’t think many people’s time in the evening is as expensive as yours.
I don’t know what $260 buys in the US but £130 could buy a decent camera or some sports equiptment here.
I’m suprised people scoff at saving money.
This is going to be as big as Google! When’s it going IPO?
Wow. I would totally use that. So would TONS of college students!
http://collegemogul.com
Honestly , people go shopping to their nearest store. Its not like everyone has access to all the different stores or can be bothered to shop for items in the different stores. people go local and shop for most of their things in their known store.
No wonder a site like this has taken 3 years to shift. its even getting free tv promotions from one of the major 3 supermarkets in the uk, i still would not use.
The likes of Aldi , netto , lidl are becoming more popular as the british feel the pinch since were taxed at every level and get nothing for it.
If your greedy or connected in the uk your fine. Average Joe is too busy worrying about their bills to use this site. Heck even our politicians have their hands in the tills. In what other nation can a politician make the tax payer pay for their whole years worth of groceries.
Corruption isn’t only in the third world.
The UKs public figures are scrutinised down to the last penny, the media are hungry for scandal so politicians and public figures have to be extremely careful not to be corrupt or they get publicly tarred and feathered.
Too much work, I would rather just go to the local shoprite.
http://mikesmon...ub.blogspot.com
This site is for family type shoppers and does have a great value for the committed grocery deal hunter. There are a few issues, however:
1. The feeds are based only upon online shopping prices. In the US, online shopping has very limited reach (Peapod, Alberston’s, etc). Online grocery tends to have higher prices, so savvy shoppers in the US won’t likely embrace it as easily
2. Grocery chains hate these types of sites because they want to create loyalty with their shoppers. That doesn’t happen with this site, obviously. It’s be easy for these chains to block feeds if they wanted to, and experience in the US tells me most would.
3. It’s a niche of a niche market. Coupon users put it many hours to get savings, but this type of site doesn’t give you the kind of savings that a simple paper coupon is the US can give you.
4. I see sites in the US like redplum.com that’s owned by coupon giant Valassis as likely the type of site that would do something like this is the US but easier. They have all the grocery and CPG guys already doing business with them.
5. The winner in the US will create value and LESS work for the consumer to find a good deal at their grocery chain
I think there are many aspects of life where we should stick to being old fashion. SHopping is one of them!
Quick someone port this to the iphone.
I wish we had McCain’s rustic oven chips in the US.
http://www.mysu...84&Store=-1
I’m all for buying stuff online but grocery shopping is a social institution not to be messed with. You get to experience road rage on the way to the supermarket, spend hours looking for a car park. Wonder aimlessly down the aisles looking for every item on your list, queue up 10 deep and then be hit on by all kinds of perverts. Finish that off with losing your car in the maze like car park and more road rage on the way home. Yup, online grocery shopping is just not worth it.
Irene
Irene Green lasers rulz
Do you actually loose anything by using this service as you save time having to go to the supermarket, you potentially get the groceries delivered to your door for free allowing you to spend quaolity time with family or friends instead, you avoid the dreaded supermarket queue, and you might save a bit of money and get introduced to healthier food options… where is the downfall??
I’d rather be sitting at a starbucks with a nice coffee ordering my groceries online than trying to find parking and standing in line to pay for my groceries. At least for the everyday stuff
Online grocery shopping may worth for a people those avoid spending time in super market however most of the people would rather prefer buying grocery visiting a supermarket or ordering over phone for the local dealer those provide home delivery.
Online grocery shopping may worth for people those avoid spending time in super market however most of the people would rather prefer buying grocery visiting a supermarket or ordering over phone for the local dealer those provide home delivery.
When you see the kind of savings that can be made by comparing prices, it is worth the time and effort to look at sites like mysupermarket.com, as unless you have money to burn, you may be surprised to see the quite large differences in prices between stores.
Websites like these can save you hundreds of pounds a year, good enough reason for me to visit them!