Some residents of Great Britain have conducted an informal pricing survey involving Wal-Mart and its competitors that they say surprised them. Here’s their account of the shocking beer survey in the United Kingdom: “We live in East Bridgford, a village approximately 15 miles east of Nottingham. We decided to examine the price of a pint of bottled beer being sold by retailers in a 10 mile radius of the village. It is a largely rural area with a range of owner operated village shops, mini-supermarkets (e.g. Co-Op) and 3 large supermarkets: Asda (wholly owned by Wal-Mart), Safeway (nothing to do with Safeway in the US) and Morrison’s ( the fourth largest food retailer in Britain). Purely in the interests of academic research, with a few friends, the exercise was conducted to examine in-depth the cost benefit feasibility of a key issue that goes straight to the heart of British males: the price of beer. I cannot pretend that our survey was detailed or methodical. In fact it started in a very informal way with a group of friends having a beer in our local pub when the subject of supermarkets arose. The conversation went something like this: “Going to a large supermarket here is jaw-breaking tedious, but we all do it because it is cheap and convenient.” Then somebody challenged the assertion about cheapness and we decided to check beer prices in a number of shops and supermarkets. Interestingly, Wal Mart/Asda proved to be more expensive (??1.70 per pint) than our village post office (??1.65 per pint). OK, the choice is bigger at Asda, but all you have to do is ask Tom in the post office what you want and within a couple of days there it is. As our post office does not sell denim jeans or Barbie dolls such products were excluded from the survey, and anyway who wants to wear crap jeans even if they are cheap. Trouble is, when we mentioned to other friends the startling results, nobody believed us! We are becoming conditioned into traveling miles and wasting hours to buy beer which is cheaper around the corner! And our dear leader, Phony Tony, rabbits on TV about car fumes contributing to global warming… ”
“This price survey was not done for the benefit of anybody else except for ourselves, however I have to admit the result was surprising to most of us, particularly when very high petrol costs and time were also taken into account.. We did not publish the findings in any way.” For contacts in the East Bridgford Beer Study, contact [email protected]. In some cases, Wal-Mart just doesn’t sell for less. Our correspondents in England say that a university study on the price of beer is being considered. Should be plenty of students who’d love to tap into that one.
