Pick n Pay’s basket was the most expensive.<\/p>\n
Unlike BusinessTech’s shopping price war<\/a>, which looked at 16 food and non-food items, the medical and healthcare products chosen are not white-label brands, resulting in prices being extremely close.<\/p>\n A food and product basket comparison that exclusively features house brands will show much larger price differences as stores have greater control over pricing.<\/p>\n For some items, such as Strepsils and Vicks Vaporub, the difference was only a few cents.<\/p>\n This explains why Dis-Chem and Clicks regularly run promotions on various items.<\/p>\n Below are the prices across the stores: All prices are non-promotional and sourced online. Prices in-store may differ.<\/em><\/p>\n Price increases<\/strong><\/p>\n South Africans have been battling major cost increases over the last year, and medical items are following this trend.<\/p>\n In March, inflation grew to 7.1% from 7.0% in February, according to Stats SA<\/a>. This comes despite many economists predicting a slight decrease to 6.9%.<\/p>\n Inflation of food and non-alcoholic beverages were major contributors to the increase, increasing by 14.0% year-on-year.<\/p>\n Our shopping price war also showed a major increase in the cost of food and non-food items, increasing by an average of 12.96% year-on-year across retailers.<\/p>\n However, the average year-on-year increase for medical items was higher than it was in the shopping price war, coming out at 13.76%.<\/p>\n The largest jump came from Dis-Chem, with a 15.94% increase.<\/p>\n Clicks saw the smallest increase of 11.77%, which helped it climb from third last year to this year’s winner.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/pharma-retailer-prices-.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\n
\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/pharma-2022-v-2023.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n