More turning to cheaper housebrands to beat rising costs
Judith Tan
Wed, Jun 04, 2008
The Straits Times
SPIRALLING food prices have prompted many grocery shoppers to switch to housebrands.
This is borne out in the latest Nielsen Retail Index which shows that a surge of 8.7 per cent in shoppers going for supermarkets and hypermarkets own labels between May and October last year, compared to almost zero six months previously.
This number jumped by a further 14.3 per cent in the following six months - from November 2007 to April this year.
Ms Ooi Pin Pin, associate director of retail services at The Nielsen Company (Singapore and Malaysia) said that this confirms that cost-conscious Singaporean consumers 'are switching to cheaper alternatives of their regularly consumed household groceries'.
The survey also showed that more Singaporean shoppers are turning to supermarkets for fresh foods.
This resulted in a drop of 7 per cent of spending at the wet markets last year.
This corresponded with the 4 per cent growth in shopper spending on fresh foods at the supermarkets and 2 per cent rise at hypermarkets. Among the fresh foods, meat saw the biggest jump - with 15 per cent more claiming to buy theirs from supermarket this year.
'With frozen meat costing less than fresh, coupled with the government's recent campaign encouraging Singaporeans to switch to frozen meat ... we are seeing quite a considerable level of conversion,' Ms Ooi said.
