November 2012
Featured in this insight: Consumer goods & FMCG , Financial services, Retail
Study reveals shoppers take time to find best deals: A survey conducted by Poundland has discovered that shoppers are timing their visit to their local supermarket store in search of the cheapest and best deals on their grocery shopping. 32% admitted to doing this around the prime times when supermarkets are likely to cut the prices of their perishable products, mainly food, and products reaching their sell by date.
Almost one fifth of shoppers took as long as half an hour per shopping trip in order to thoroughly check the prices of products, and a huge 71% admitted to stalking the aisles slowly to make sure they didn't miss out on any such deals.
This has resulted in shoppers spending an estimated 130 days of their lives searching for the cheapest deals when doing their weekly grocery shop.
A further 13% said they had tried haggling in order to reduce the cost of their shop, and 5% had even damaged, or tried to damage, products in order to have the price reduced.
Other tactics that consumers have undertaken in order to reduce their shopping cost are; stopping buying non-essentials such as clothes (75%) and cutting out buying air fresheners and alcohol (both 44%). almost one in ten also admitted to taking a calculator with them to ensure that their purchases did not exceed their budget.
The head of Poundland, Jim McCarthy, said: " More than ever, the pressure is on shoppers to make their money stretch further as they spend increasing amounts of time and energy worrying about how to avoid a shock at the till point."
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