Mike's Minute: Look at Australia for the supermarket experience

If you are one of those exercised about supermarkets and whether they are scandal merchants, then you must follow the current court case in Australia.  It’s the second of its type.  The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is dealing with Woolworths, having previously dealt with Coles. The Coles' case decision is reserved as they wait for this week's Woolworths case.  The charge, basically, is they up the price of something before they cut the price and claim it's on sale. The lawyers called it a "subtle magic".    They are using a basket of goods that involves Tim Tams.  The reason I mention this, and you should follow it, is for the simple fact that Australia is not short of supermarkets or supermarket competition. There are the 'Big 3", which is our two plus Aldi, and in total they have ten.   The point being, if you asked your average Australian "do they get a good deal and is there enough competition", they would say no.  The same way they say 'no' here.  Are you ripped off? 'Yes' would be the answer from both sides of the Tasman.  And in that is the conundrum. What you feel might well be different to what is real.  Especially around money and price are powerful things and often what you want to see is what you will see.  Part of it I'm sure is the dynamic nature of supermarkets and the literally thousands of products, and therefore tens of thousands of prices, they deal with every day.  Different brands, different sizes, different specials, different deals, one off's vs regular prices, specials vs promotional prices, where in the isle it's placed, what sort of supplier deal is struck, what the cost of transport was, how many you bought etc, etc.  It presumably goes on forever.  Which is not to say anything other than when it has that many moving parts, telling me it's cheaper to buy baked beans in Sydney or Geneva doesn’t explain how this all works.  Let's see how the courts work through it and what, if anything, comes from it.  But in Australia there's lots of choice and lots of competition. Allegedly there's everything the supermarket critic here could want.  And yet they're still in court. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.