The Australian Retailers Association (ARA) has called for greater transparency around the supermarket data released today by CHOICE.
ARA CEO Paul Zahra said taxpayers, government, and most importantly consumers have access to fair and transparent findings however there are a number of data discrepancies that require clarification by CHOICE.
“CHOICE has confirmed that the products it has compared are not like-for-like and in the case of seven products, include comparisons between premium national brands at Coles and Woolworths and Aldi’s private label. This is not a fair or useful comparison for customers,” said Mr Zahra.
“Customers are also being presented with a basket of only 14 items – far under-representing the weekly shop. Supermarkets range thousands of products, and Australian families are often buying triple this volume in their weekly shop. A far more robust product sample size, would also give customers a better representation of the average cost of their basket.”
“The Federal Government has called for increased transparency for customers, yet this report is anything but transparent. Customers do their own comparison between supermarkets, and they deserve to be able to make judgments for themselves with the full information that CHOICE has collected.”
“This report is funded by taxpayers to the tune of $1.1milllion and disappointingly is less than transparent and continues to fall well short of the mark,” he said.
(ENDS)