2 weeks Ago By Cheyanne Enciso
IGA’s parent company Metcash believes the willingness of households to shop around for bargains amid higher living costs has prompted more competition in the supermarket sector. Fronting the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s supermarket inquiry hearings on Thursday, Metcash Foods chief executive Grant Ramage said this was because “supermarkets need to present the most compelling offer to shoppers in the form of their advertising, their promotional activity”. Mr Ramage also said Metcash in the past few years had seen a reversal in shopping trends prevalent during COVID-19, when consumers were forced to shop within close proximity to their homes and had fewer supermarket visits.
“It seems clear to us that shoppers are prepared to move around more,” he said. “What we’ve seen in the last two calendar years . .
. is certainly that shoppers are prepared to shop around for value, we see them buying increasingly products that are on promotion.” Cheyanne Enciso Cheyanne Enciso In late October, Coles chief executive Leah Weckert also observed a rise in the number of customers shopping around, going up to eight retailers a week to find better value.
At the time, she said “cross-shopping” was a significant feature of the market currently. Metcash is an ASX-listed supplier of food, groceries and liquor to thousands of independent supermarkets and bottle shops around Australia. Mr Ramage on Thursday said Metcash, for the most part, would “scrape” websites to monitor the prices of Coles and Woolworths.
But Aldi’s old IT system had forced the company to head into physical stores and monitor the German grocer’s prices that way, Mr Ramage said. The ACCC earlier this week heard from Aldi managing director of national buying Jordan Lack, who conceded a “technical limitation” had made it difficult for shoppers to view all of its prices online. The regulator is conducting a series of public hearings in November involving executives of all of major supermarkets as part of its examination into grocery prices and competition in the sector.
Executives from Coles and Woolworths will front the inquiry next week..
