Rise of the price watchers

Retail Price Watch, South Africa's price comparison website for household goods, is now offering retail analytics (pricing data) to consumers and market-watchers as the cost of living continues to rise. The site, which has been operating since 2012, provides historical and up-to-date prices of more than 35,000 household goods at stores across the country.

"Our company offers retail analytics at a reasonable price to organisations interested in pricing and inflation trends of household goods," says Viccy Baker of Retail Price Watch.

"We now have an accurate record of monthly prices for the products in our categories (food, beverages, baby essentials, personal care, and household clean and pet care) from 1 January 2012."

She says that great interest has been expressed in the fact that Retail Price Watch has recently started collecting and analysing data from clothing chains.

"We believe we are the only company offering data and in-depth analysis of consumer and clothing prices on a 'real-time' basis, providing companies with business intelligence while it is still relevant and meaningful to their sales teams."

This can take the form of comparison pricing per category, per individual product or brand, per basket, or per retail sector. The number of hits to the website has more than doubled each year and in 2015is expected to approach 400,000.