Consumer's basket was advertised as a government initiative to help combat soaring prices in basic groceries necessities. But does it really work as a consumers' relief or is it designed to benefit large supermarket industries?
The Consumer’s Basket, introduced in November 2022, is a government measure aimed at stabilizing the prices of essential grocery items to combat inflation. Under this initiative, supermarket chains with an annual turnover exceeding 90 million euros are required to offer a list of 51 basic categories of goods at the lowest possible prices and maintain these prices for a week.
While the General Secretary of Commerce, Sotiris Anagnostopoulos, has stated that the regulation's goal is to curb price hikes and ensure affordability for essential goods—asserting that it is not an agreement between the government and supermarket chains—recent market analysis suggests otherwise. The data indicates that the initiative has significantly benefited private label products and, by extension, large supermarket chains, but has not succeeded in curbing overall inflation.
To answer those questions, this investigation gathered and analysed data from the Greek State's Market Observatory e-katanalotis for the week of July 26–30, 2024, where all supermarkets are obligated to post their pricing lists daily. The analysis compared product prices within the Consumer’s Basket to other market products across following 12 different merchants participating in the initiative: AB Basilopoulos, My Market, Kritikos, Masoutis, Sklavenitis, Galaxia, Synka, E-fresh, Xalikadakis, Market In, Lidl & Bazaar.
During the past week, all merchants’ Consumer Baskets combined contained only 1.066 out of the total 8.944 products found in supermarkets. This indicates that the measure applies to approximately 1 out of 10 products, quite a small portion of the total market.
According to the government's order, all merchants are obligated to provide products of a minimum of 51 distinct categories out of 351 total existing categories, which, supposedly represent the average family's weekly basic needs. The analysis shows that all merchants offer at least one product for each category. Some merchants include extra categories, with the maximum amount reaching 56. For the majority of categories, the consumer's basket includes very few of the total available market options. Especially for cleaning and personal hygiene products such as laundry detergents, shampoo and toothpaste, in-basket options account only for less than 10% of the overall available products on supermarket shelves. On the other hand, for a few categories like white sugar, baby cream, ham and beef the majority of options are included in the Consumer’s Basket.
Consumer's basket has been advertised as the cheapest market option. As it seems, most supermarkets include, indeed, the cheapest product in the basket for the majority of the 51 categories. For example, as shown in the following chart, AB Basilopoulos offers the cheapest product in 40 out of the 57 categories in its basket. Yet, if you shop at some of the biggest merchants, like Sklavenitis, remember to look for the cheapest options outside the basket's shelf for 1 out of 2 product categories.
Moreover, there are some types of products that all merchants prefer to keep their cheapest options outside the Consumer’s Basket. Top 10 product categories for which the less expensive products cannot be found inside the basket are baby diapers, baby wipes, sanitary pads and tampons, dishwasher detergents as well as all types of coffee.
When it comes to private labels inside the Consumer’s Basket, the data indicate that almost one in two supermarkets use the basket as a chance to promote their own-manufactured products. Lidl stands out with a very high focus on PL products within the basket (87.50%), suggesting a strong strategy towards private label products. AB Basilopoulos, Market In, Bazaar and Masoutis offer only their own products as the sole option in the basket for 1 out of 4 product categories. But as we saw before, this option might or might not be the cheapest one available on their shelves. The rest of the merchants have a more balanced or moderate approach towards PL products inside the basket, with varying degrees of reliance on non-PL products. Finally, E-fresh does not offer PL products as it is an e-shop without manufacturing whereas Galaxias, a traditional PL product merchant surprisingly prefers to keep its own products outside the Consumer’s Basket.
Indeed, the data shows that merchants who are more likely to include the cheapest categories in their basket are also more likely to promote their private labels within those categories. Merchants like AB, Bazaar, Lidl, Market In and Masoutis whose own-manufactured products are the cheapest market options, tend to include them in the basket, probably as a promotion strategy.
For example. Bazaar offers 92% of its most affordable products per category as part of the Consumer’s Basket. However, the majority of those products (53 %) are the supermarket’s private labels. Similarly, AB Basilopoulos includes 70% of its cheapest products in the basket, 7 in 10 of which are produced by the supermarket brand itself.