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angledgeOK, maybe not. But still - I had a vision yesterday of the future of GIS & pricing data intersecting in a way that would undermine a lot of today's retail environment. Imagine if you had a program. You enter your shopping list - groceries, toiletries, etc. You'd fill in some other parameters - Yes, I'm fine with generics; I only want to buy meat/fish/poultry from Safeway; I have time to visit 3 (or 4, or 1) locations; maybe something like Yes, I'm fine with buying a bigger size box or getting 2 boxes of Cheerios instead of 1 if there's a sale. Then the program checks prices on all the items on your list at: Kroger, CVS, Walmart, Target, Walgreens, etc. It maps the nearest locations to where you are. It considers your parameters (I'm in a hurry today - let's get this done in 2 stops). And then it gives you your shopping lists, broken down by destination. Cool! I'm going to Target to get toilet paper, blueberries, peanut butter, eggs, & orange juice (buy 2 bottles & get free butter). Then I'm going to CVS to get shampoo, canned soup, hamburger buns, & antiperspirant (which wasn't on today's list, but is on a general "Keep in Stock" list, & is on a really good sale).
I know there are people out there who sit down every week with the shopping circulars & coupon sheets, & compare prices until they've found the cheapest deals for each item. But I think that vast majority of us massively fail to optimize this process. There are websites out there to help, but I've never found them all that useful because they mostly address processed/frozen/canned foods, & they only show bargains - not everything that's for sale. So if I want to buy a specific thing (ORGANIC FRESH PEACHES), I can't find that specific thing. This may be because they don't have access to the stores' entire price database - I don't know.
Maybe programs aren't smart enough yet to incorporate the flexible rules I'm envisioning, & that I think would make such a program more appealing to shoppers. But I don't think we're far from this. Someday, there will be an app for that. And it will be a game-changer for retail.
I know there are people out there who sit down every week with the shopping circulars & coupon sheets, & compare prices until they've found the cheapest deals for each item. But I think that vast majority of us massively fail to optimize this process. There are websites out there to help, but I've never found them all that useful because they mostly address processed/frozen/canned foods, & they only show bargains - not everything that's for sale. So if I want to buy a specific thing (ORGANIC FRESH PEACHES), I can't find that specific thing. This may be because they don't have access to the stores' entire price database - I don't know.
Maybe programs aren't smart enough yet to incorporate the flexible rules I'm envisioning, & that I think would make such a program more appealing to shoppers. But I don't think we're far from this. Someday, there will be an app for that. And it will be a game-changer for retail.
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no subject
Date: 2015-06-25 03:27 am (UTC)There's a few reasons why they don't:
1) Stores have some items that they deliberately lose money on (loss leaders) just to get you in the store and they make up the lost money by charging higher prices on other items. If you had a program that let you cherry pick the loss leaders at each store, the whole pricing model falls apart so they'd never go for that.
2) Prices aren't always consistent across all stores in a chain. Prices can vary based on local demand, over/under stock, regional specials, etc. Every individual store has some control over pricing to move stock when they need to. Prices may vary from week to week and from day to day.
Based on the reasons above, it's possible that there isn't a single database that has accurate pricing for all stores within a single chain. Now multiply this by all the various grocery store chains in your area and all the possible products and you see the enormity of the problem.
The only way I think it could possibly work is if there was a phone app that allowed end users to input the name and address of a particular store and had them scan the barcode and enter the price on every product they purchased in a shopping trip for submission to a giant price tracking database.
The main problem with this solution is that it's tedious and people are lazy. Volunteers wouldn't be enough. You'd have to pay people to scan products and enter prices and there's surely be people who would game the system and enter fake prices just to get paid which would pollute your data.
Another problem is that the price data would be mostly stale. Prices fluctuate too much (frequent sales) and without a high sampling rate with users scanning and entering prices at least weekly, preferably daily, the price data wouldn't be accurate enough to be useful.