Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Coles online versus Woolworths online grocery shopping. Major difference.

There's a major difference between shopping online between Coles and Woolworths.

Do you know what it is?

The difference can make a very considerable difference to how much you pay for your groceries.

The major difference is Coles online charges more for groceries that you purchase online that don't fall into a special category such as a weekly special or an "every day price". This could be the majority of the grocery items you purchase.

On the other hand, Woolworths charges the same online as it does in-store.

You still need to compare prices between Coles and Woolworths to work out which is better value for your money, but if you're buying online, chances are Woolworths may be cheaper for most products as it doesn't increase the prices online compared to buying in-store. For example, I recently did a quick price check on a few items. These grocery items didn't have any special promotions.

McCain Chicken Parmagiana

Coles
online $7.47
in-store $7.00

Woolworths
online $7.00
in-store $7.00

Peters Original Vanilla Ice Cream 4l

Coles
online  $10.45
in-store $9.50

Woolworths
online $9.50
in-store $9.50

Kellogg's Crunchy Nut 670g

Coles
online $8.25
in-store $7.50

Woolworths
online  $7.49
in-store $7.49

Milo 750g

Coles
online $10.73
in-store $9.75

Woolworths
online $9.75
in-store $9.75

As you can see from the above prices, for items that don't fall into a special sales type category, Coles priced the items above online at up to 10% more, whereas for Woolworths there was no price difference. That can make a noticeable difference to the total price.

Keep in mind both Coles and Woolworths charge for delivery. However with Woolworths you can place and order and pick up the order at the nominated store later. I hope to test this service in the future.

One handy outcome that came out of this review is if you want to review prices, you can be in Coles and look up the price on the Woolworths site and know you're comparing in-store prices. You can't be in Woolworths to do this since Coles prices online are the same as their in-store prices.

An unusual observation I made was that some products in Coles and Woolworths do not having matching sizes such as vegemite, so it may not be possible to crosscheck the price of some items. In the past I've found this to be a retail strategy in parts of the computer industry that makes it harder for people to price match. It makes me wonder if this same strategy is being used in the grocery sector.

When comparing products another thing that does make it harder is even though there is considerable overlap between the range Coles and Woolworths have, even on the small price check I performed, a number of items were not in both stores.

I hope others find this information useful.

Kelvin Eldridge
www,JustLocal.com.au




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