All major supermarkets in the UK have agreed to improve the way they display prices in-store. This is a big victory for our Price It Right campaign and means it’ll soon be easier to compare prices.
Great news! The Government today announced that all 10 UK supermarkets have committed to making their pricing clearer and simpler for shoppers.
Our research has repeatedly shown that people are concerned about rising food prices, and that they’re having to shop around to get the best deals. In fact, our survey found that six in 10 people have changed their food shopping habits due to rising food prices.
People told us that they were having to compare prices more carefully, and yet the way prices were displayed in shops wasn’t helping.
Our mystery shopping of supermarkets revealed that the unit price – which is supposed to enable you to compare the price of products based on the same unit (eg per Kg or per litre) – wasn’t working as intended. We found that the unit price was often hard to read, given in inconsistent units or just simply missing.
Clearer supermarket prices
Our Price It Right campaign, which launched in 2012, called on supermarkets to take action and make their pricing simpler and easier to read. Some responded quicker than others. In July 2013, Aldi, The Co-operative, Morrisons and Waitrose were the first to agree to take action in the three areas we identified – consistency, legibility and displaying the unit price on special offers. Sainsbury’s also improved the display of its labels and looked at clearer pricing for fruit and vegetables.
The announcement today, however, means that all 10 of the main supermarkets have committed to improving the visibility of their labels and to providing more consistent unit pricing. Six have also said that they’ll put the unit price on special offers so that people stand a better chance of working out if they’re really better value or not.
We’ll be monitoring the progress that the supermarkets are making – and with unit pricing improvements secured, we will now focus on ensuring that the supermarkets also get their act together on misleading special offers. You can help by signing our latest petition, and by sharing any dodgy deals you spot on supermarket shelves.