Consumer app being upgraded to compare supermarket prices
The Development Ministry is seeking to assign the role of “Big Brother” for 15,000 product codes to the e-katanalotis market monitoring platform.
The aim with this upgrade is to make e-katanalotis a key tool for empowering consumers, as they will be able to directly search and compare prices in almost all supermarket codes. This is considered to be able to help consumers make the most advantageous purchases on the one hand, and stimulate competition on the other.
Sources have told Kathimerini that the ministry plans to bring to Parliament a legislative provision according to which every product available in electronic supermarkets (both in purely electronic supermarkets and in the e-stores of other chains) should display its barcode in a form that is readable and not just as a photo of the packaging that is displayed today.
That way, the ministry’s agencies will be able to easily make regular checks for all products and register the data on the e-katanalotis platform. In this way, supermarkets will not have to constantly send the price lists of the final prices, as they are obliged to do now.
After the app is upgraded, there will be an advertising campaign so that it is used by at least 1 million consumers. The relevant application today appears to have been downloaded by about 100,000 users, while its rating is very low, only 2.6 (out of 5), as it is not easy to use, contains few product codes and is not updated often.
Although the relevant platform is actually more than 14 years old, as it started to operate as a price observatory (e-prices) in December 2009, it never actually fulfilled its role as an easy-to-use and reliable tool for the consumer. It started with the prospect of showing the prices of 1,000 products.
The products now displayed on the platform are very few, and the average selling price has not been displayed for a long time. It is worth noting that the platform shows much more complete information about the household basket and fuel prices.
