Many of us make (part or all) the weekly purchase in a supermarket, and we also spend a lot of time to go through shelves to try to acquire products that have a good quality / price ratio.
At home we are still looking for fresh produce in the market and in neighborhood stores, but I personally I have learned to read the labels at the same time that I am looking for a price adjusted to our possibilities.
And, as things stand, it is convenient to discover how we can save in the shopping cart, without affecting the quality of food. In its latest study, the OCU assures us that A family can save a little more than 1,000 euros a year on average. Do you want to know more? We wanted to reflect the true price level of supermarkets, hypermarkets and discount stores, and The study consists of 2 baskets of basic food and hygiene products and drugstore.
Choose between leading brands and white brands?
We have already seen in Peques y Más, that in childcare products, the brand is still important for parents, but now we are going to talk about the shopping cart.
This year the OCU has increased the sample, reaching 65 cities, 12 online supermarkets and 1,194 establishments throughout Spain, where almost 170,000 prices have been collected
All supermarkets except three, have raised the price of packaged products. This OCU link can find out how to locate the cheapest supermarkets.
- Basket Type: leading brand products and fresh products. Composed of what a Spanish average family usually consumes, it contains 156 products, all of them from leading brands in its segment (except perishable products, which respond to the same commercial category).
In this basket the packaged products that are sought are exactly the same in all supermarkets in terms of brand, size, variety ...
- Economic Basket: the cheapest products of the establishment are analyzed, usually white marks. It is aimed at those consumers, increasingly numerous, who choose to buy the cheapest products, regardless of their brand. The products that make up this basket belong to 3 different groups: packaged food, beverages and drugstore and hygiene items.
In this case the increases have been above 2%
Depending on where you live, the shopping cart can be more or less expensive
By cities, the cheapest for the global product basket are Córdoba, Vigo, Granada, Murcia, Pontevedra, Madrid East (Corredor del Henares), Palencia and La Coruña. And at the other extreme, the Basque cities except Vitoria, those of the Canary Islands and Pamplona are the most expensive.
The novelty this year is that it increases the number of cities with savings above this figure
The prices in the main chains have risen in a moderate way, but their evolution has been uneven: the prices of the Economic Basket have suffered an increase of 3.6%, while in the Type Basket the increase has been only 1%.
In the opinion of the OCU This increase is due to the greater price increase of white label products compared to manufacturer products.
Is it true that some establishments have not applied the VAT increase?
The OCU has carried out a rapid survey to find out if the VAT increase has been transferred to the consumer or, as some establishments announced, the price has been maintained.
Data indicates that, most chains have raised prices
Although I have already told you about the search engine provided by the OCU to locate the cheapest supermarket in our area, I wanted to mention that it is structured in a very complete way. It offers the possibility to select according to different purchase criteria (For example, you can select the option of 'I only buy packaged in the supermarket', or 'I prioritize healthy shopping').
