The Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs Minister, Chris Bowen MP, today announced progress in giving consumer more information through the Grocerychoice website.
Under the new arrangements, starting from the 2nd February 2009, the consumer organisation CHOICE will take over the management of Grocerychoice.
"CHOICE's experience with the needs and interests of the Australian consumer make it well placed to be able to provide the most useful information on Grocerychoice to help consumers find the best value at the checkout," Mr Bowen said.
"CHOICE is a 100 per cent independent not-for-profit organisation which has been representing Australian consumers for almost 50 years, and importantly, has been collecting grocery data for the past 25 years."
The new management arrangements of Grocerychoice include:
- The process to transfer management of the website from the ACCC to CHOICE has commenced as of Friday, 19th December 2008;
- The January monthly survey data will appear on CHOICE's branded Grocerychoice website on 2nd February 2009;
- Grocerychoice will be relaunched by CHOICE in July 2009 with significant changes to the existing site.
The ACCC, as the regulator, was always limited in what information it could present on the website. Adding new features like ‘specials' would have compromised the regulator whose responsibility it is to respond to consumer complaints about false or misleading representations in advertising.
CHOICE intends to include more frequent, weekly price information and more detailed information, like for example, individual supermarket pricing comparisons, and possibly, individual product price comparisons, subject to satisfactory supermarket co-operation.
"At the time of the launch the Government made it clear that through Grocerychoice it wanted to give a guide to consumers as to the cheapest supermarkets in their region," Mr Bowen said.
"The Government also made it clear that it wanted to provide further enhancements and information for consumers. Today's announcement makes good this commitment.
"As I outlined previously, these new arrangements represent value for money for the taxpayer and will be put in place at no additional cost.
"This will see consumers benefit from even greater information but at no greater expense than the current appropriation the ACCC was granted to operate Grocerychoice.
"CHOICE will actively seek feedback from the community both through Grocerychoice, Choice.com.au and an Industry Consultative Committee."
The decision to directly outsource the Grocerychoice website to CHOICE was in accordance with the Commonwealth Procurement Guidelines.
Attachment
Management of Grocerychoice under CHOICE
Phase 1
CHOICE will manage the Grocerychoice website from 2nd February 2009.
Initial changes to the website will include:
- The Grocerychoice website will have the CHOICE name/logos;
- A comments forum where consumers can provide moderated feedback and comments;
- Access to a consumer grocery survey;
- The continuation of a subscription service where consumers can receive notice of new data releases, etc.
Phase 2
Following Phase 1, CHOICE will continue to publish monthly basket prices using the data provided under the existing data collection survey.
CHOICE will ensure that the monthly survey data will be posted on the first business day of the month and also ensure that the basket prices remain on the Grocerychoice website until the next set of basket prices are published.
Phase 3
Grocerychoice will be relaunched by CHOICE in July 2009 with significant changes to the existing site.
Subject to satisfactory supermarket co-operation, the new website will include the following features:
- Publication of basket prices for individual supermarket locations;
- Publication of basket prices for all leading supermarkets chains or groups and other smaller independent operators;
- Publication of grocery prices on a no less than a weekly basis.
- Other further enhancements may include:
- The provision of additional information on grocery products, such as nutritional information, unit pricing information, product origin, etc.
- The addition of a new functionality that allows users to construct their own baskets of grocery products and to compare these baskets across supermarkets.