{"id":308770,"date":"2019-04-04T07:46:04","date_gmt":"2019-04-04T05:46:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=308770"},"modified":"2019-06-03T14:02:18","modified_gmt":"2019-06-03T12:02:18","slug":"price-war-2019-woolworths-vs-pick-n-pay-vs-checkers-vs-spar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/308770\/price-war-2019-woolworths-vs-pick-n-pay-vs-checkers-vs-spar\/","title":{"rendered":"Price war 2019: Woolworths vs Pick n Pay vs Checkers vs Spar"},"content":{"rendered":"

As South Africans contend with higher fuel and electricity prices from April, the reality of tighter budgets is hitting home in shopping baskets across the country.<\/p>\n

The latest data from BankservAfrica shows that, while the nominal increase in take-home pay in the country is beating inflation, in real terms, South Africans are struggling.<\/p>\n

BankservAfrica noted that the average real take-home pay increased by only 1.5% year-on-year in February to reach a real average increase to R14,066 a month.<\/p>\n

Food prices, meanwhile, have continued to increase at rates far beyond those levels.<\/p>\n

In February, Stats SA’s inflation data showed that items like tea, fruit and vegetables saw price increases exceeding 15% – however the latest price war conducted by BusinessTech reveals that at major retailers, some of these prices have climbed even higher.<\/p>\n

The table below shows how the average prices in the BusinessTech food basket changed between 2018 and 2019.<\/p>\n

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Of the four retailers, Spar saw the smallest jump in the price of its basket between 2018 and 2019 – mainly due to significantly scaled-down packaging for its store-branded tea. It also saw a price reduction in the price of its eggs, rice and sugar.<\/p>\n

Pick n Pay also saw price reductions (also eggs and rice), and Woolies saw R2 drop off the price of milk – but Checkers saw the most price freezes, with four items not showing any increases, leading to its basket remaining the cheapest.<\/p>\n

One of the most notable price jumps between 2018 and 2019 is the price of Coke across all stores – between R4 and R5 more expensive than a year ago.<\/p>\n

Coke and most other fizzy drinks were subject to the introduction of the sugar tax in 2018, which saw another marginal increase in 2019. From 1 April 2019, the sugar tax moved from 2.1 cents per gram in excess of 4 grams of sugar per 100ml, to 2.21 cents.<\/p>\n

Fruit and veg is also up significantly (around 20%), while maize and margarine have also seen a significant price jump.<\/p>\n

Based on the in-store prices of products as at 2 April 2019, this is how the retailers compared.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/strong> the tables have been updated to reflect the online price of Woolworths milk<\/em><\/p>\n

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The graph below outlines how this basket has changed over time, including the results from the 2015 price war.<\/p>\n

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Methodology<\/strong><\/p>\n

The BusinessTech basket comprises 12 common food items that would be found in a middle class family shopping basket. It does not include items where prices are measured on a per kg basis (like meat, or cheese), to draw as fair a comparison as possible. Where possible store-branded products are used.<\/p>\n

Pick n Pay is an outlier in that it has two different store brands. For the comparison, the group’s PnP Brand<\/strong> items were used, not the group’s No Name Brand<\/strong> items, as the former is more directly tied to the Pick n Pay brand.<\/p>\n

Where these products aren’t available, the cheapest alternative is priced. Prices were sourced in-store from stores around Centurion and cross-checked online, where applicable.<\/p>\n

Promotional prices, where marked, were not taken into account<\/strong>. Woolworths’ self-raising flour prices were determined on a per kg basis. In-store prices are subject to change depending on individual regions and promotions.<\/p>\n

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Read: South Africa\u2019s petrol and electricity prices vs the world<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As South Africans contend with higher fuel and electricity prices from April, the reality of tighter budgets is hitting home in shopping baskets across the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":308804,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121],"tags":[5223,26,4067,9838,949],"class_list":["post-308770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","tag-checkers","tag-headline","tag-pick-n-pay","tag-spar","tag-woolworths"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308770"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":321111,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308770\/revisions\/321111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}