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Grocery store pricing is messed up to begin with. Anyone who is price-conscious has to evaluate based on price per weight or something similar in the first plac

Grocery store pricing is messed up to begin with. Anyone who is price-conscious has to evaluate based on price per weight or something similar in the first place. Which can be difficult / inconvenient! Sometimes it's the 10-pak that's cheaper per unit. Sometimes it's the 20-pak. Different products may not be directly comparable. Different varieties of the same product category might appear at two or three places in the same store, not counting end-caps.

hiram112 5y ago
It might just be my state or store, but most products do, in fact, include a price per item or prize per unit of weight or volume in very small print on the price labels. I'm guessing this was introduced as a law, in good faith to help consumers make more informed decisions, but I doubt the majority of numerically challenged consumers take advantage of this information. For example, all pricing labels in-store will have prices like the following, from their weekly ad: https://ibb.co/187RkPb https://ibb.co/187RkPb
- klodolph 5y ago
  I mention this because the article seemed to assume that people were buying by the box, and only evaluating price per box, ignoring the weight. Price per weight only partially solves the problems... lots of products aren't directly comparable in the first place. For example, 100g of product X is not like 100g of product Y. It works well enough with things like raw ingredients (flour, oil, etc) but even once you are talking about things like cereal, jams, mayonnaise, etc. it starts to break down. It also doesn't work well with meat.
- OkGoDoIt 5y ago
  I have noticed that a surprising amount of time one product will be in a certain unit while a competitor product will be in a different unit. So one will have the price per pound and one will have the price per ounce, good luck trying to divide by 16 in your head to see if you’re saving a few cents here or there. it’s so common that I have to assume it’s on purpose, probably an instance of complying with the letter of the law but not the spirit.
  - sheepdestroyer 5y ago
    One more reason to use metric. Here everything is marked price/Kg, price/L, very hard to imagine a life where people ate battling random units or no marking even.
AfterShave 5y ago
It always amazes me that some places don't have a comparison price by weight listed in stores. Small mom and pop kind of stores don't always have it. But a "proper" grocery store will always list per weight here.

hiram112 5y ago

It might just be my state or store, but most products do, in fact, include a price per item or prize per unit of weight or volume in very small print on the price labels. I'm guessing this was introduced as a law, in good faith to help consumers make more informed decisions, but I doubt the majority of numerically challenged consumers take advantage of this information. For example, all pricing labels in-store will have prices like the following, from their weekly ad: https://ibb.co/187RkPb https://ibb.co/187RkPb

klodolph 5y ago
I mention this because the article seemed to assume that people were buying by the box, and only evaluating price per box, ignoring the weight. Price per weight only partially solves the problems... lots of products aren't directly comparable in the first place. For example, 100g of product X is not like 100g of product Y. It works well enough with things like raw ingredients (flour, oil, etc) but even once you are talking about things like cereal, jams, mayonnaise, etc. it starts to break down. It also doesn't work well with meat.
OkGoDoIt 5y ago
I have noticed that a surprising amount of time one product will be in a certain unit while a competitor product will be in a different unit. So one will have the price per pound and one will have the price per ounce, good luck trying to divide by 16 in your head to see if you’re saving a few cents here or there. it’s so common that I have to assume it’s on purpose, probably an instance of complying with the letter of the law but not the spirit.
- sheepdestroyer 5y ago
  One more reason to use metric. Here everything is marked price/Kg, price/L, very hard to imagine a life where people ate battling random units or no marking even.

AfterShave 5y ago

It always amazes me that some places don't have a comparison price by weight listed in stores. Small mom and pop kind of stores don't always have it. But a "proper" grocery store will always list per weight here.