Woolworths supermarkets general manager James Aylen said the company had conducted successful trials in each state and territory and today launched a rollout across all 780 Woolworths and Safeway stores.

The price comparison scheme will apply to some 19,000 items, requiring more than 12.5 million price tickets to be replaced in the next year.

It follows an investigation by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission into grocery prices earlier this year, which recommended that all grocery products should display a unit price.

Rival supermarket chains Aldi and Franklins are also adopting unit pricing.

“Woolworths has become the first national grocery retailer in Australia to introduce comparative unit pricing,” the company said in a statement today.

Mr Aylen said the unit price would be displayed underneath the usual checkout price.

“Price is one of many factors which influence customers’ purchasing decisions. Unit pricing provides value-driven customers with extra information that may help make more informed choices when they shop,” he said.

“We already have unit pricing in eight of our stores across the country and over the next year we will be updating our tickets nationwide to display unit pricing.”

- AAP

“Our members including Coles, Woolworths and Franklins have taken the initiative and all plan to have completed a full roll-out of unit pricing  before the year’s end,” said Margy Osmond of the Australian National Retailers Association (ANRA).

“We’ve always maintained our preference is for a flexible, cost-effective and nationally consistent scheme and the draft code reflects this.”

Unit pricing is the display of the price of a good per unit of measure and the code will cover advertising, as well as online food sales.

“This is a comprehensive scheme which covers all supermarkets which are over 1000 square metres in size,” said Osmond.

“This is a much better approach than a prescriptive state scheme which would be costly and complicated, with consumers likely to pick up the tab.”

Source: Retailbiz.com