By Kate Harvey
Content Manager | Pou Whakahaere Ihirangi
Do you know what unit pricing is? Once you do, you can use it to save money every time you shop at the supermarket.
But before we explain more, let’s see if you can correctly answer this quiz we recently gave 1,000 people. About 1 in 5 failed at least one question in the quiz.
Question 1
This is an image from a supermarket’s website. What is the unit price you will pay for this bag of chips if you take up the deal?
A
B
C
D
Question 2
Which of these onion options has the lowest unit price and is therefore better value?
Fresh Vegetable Onions Brown
The Odd Bunch Onions Bag 2kg
Their unit price is the same
You can't tell because the price is approximate
I don't know
Question 3
Which of these options has the lowest unit price?
Mainland Unsalted Butter 500g
Westgold Butter 400g, without the club deal
Westgold Butter 400g, with the club deal
Westgold Butter 400g, with or without the club deal
Their unit price is the same
I don't know
Question 4
Sort the eggs from the cheapest unit price to the most expensive unit price.
BCDA
DCAB
ACDB
CABD
The answers explained
Unit pricing really is the secret to saving, and supermarkets now have to display unit prices both in the store and on their websites.
What is unit pricing?
The unit price is the smaller money amount that usually sits at the bottom of a product’s price tag. It shows you how much the product costs per unit of measure. For example, the measure could be per kilogram, litre or item. When you use the unit price, you can see how much you’re paying per egg, per nappy or per 100 sheets of toilet paper.
Supermarkets can be confusing places – especially when you’re in a hurry to tick the groceries off your list. But unit pricing means you don’t need to do any tricky maths in your head to work out what item is the best value. It also helps you see past all those specials to work out if they’re really the best deal.
Let’s look at the correct answers so you can feel confident using unit pricing at the supermarket in future.
Question 1
This is an image from a supermarket’s website. What is the unit price you will pay for this bag of chips if you take up the deal?
The unit price for this bag of Eta chips on the supermarket’s website is usually $1.86/100g. But the supermarket is offering 3 bags of Eta chips for $5.50, so its current unit price for 3 bags is $1.22/100g. You can see the unit price in the top right corner under “3 for 5.50”.
This question shows how unit pricing lets you see past the specials to work out if a particular product is really the best value. Sometimes, a different size of the same product or another brand will be cheaper than the special.
While most people got this answer correct, a lot clicked on the original unit price, and some also clicked on its usual price of $2.79.
Question 2
Which of these onion options has the lowest unit price and is therefore better value?
The correct answer is The Odd Bunch Onions Bag. Its unit price is $1.20 per kg, and the loose onions’ unit price is $1.50 per kg. Of course, if you were shopping for these, you’d also want to be sure you could get through 2kg of brown onions before they went off!
Supermarkets must display the unit price of fruit and vegetables per kilogram, whether it’s loose or packaged.
Only 82% of people got this answer correct.
Question 3
Which of these options has the lowest unit price?
The correct answer is the Mainland Unsalted Butter, even though the Westgold butter is on special and has a cheaper price. The Mainland butter has a unit price of $2.00/100g, which is cheaper than the Westgold’s club deal unit price of $2.22/100g.
This question again shows how unit pricing helps when there is a product on special. It also makes it easy to see what’s the best value when products come in different sizes.
Again, 82% of people got this question correct – 15% chose the Westgold butter. The rest said they had the same unit price or they didn’t know.
Question 4
Sort the eggs from the cheapest unit price to the most expensive unit price.
The Farmer Brown eggs have the lowest unit price of 61c each. The next cheapest is the Henergy eggs, then the Better Eggs and lastly the Woodland Eggs.
Unit pricing makes it easy to buy eggs as stores must display the unit price per egg. This makes it easy to work out the cheapest way to buy eggs when you’ve got different sized packs in front of you, like in this example.
Don’t miss out on saving at the supermarket
Consumer NZ has carried out 2 surveys on unit pricing in the past few months. Of the 2,000 New Zealanders who completed our surveys, 55% said they frequently use unit pricing. But 11% are only using it rarely, and 7% said they never do.
We think if you’re not using unit pricing, you could be missing out on finding the best value products.
People who use unit pricing said they mainly look for it when products are on special or come in different sizes.
For the most part, they find unit pricing helpful when buying packaged goods, such as snacks and canned food. The next most common use is in the chiller section to compare dairy products, such as cheese and yoghurt.
Brought to you in partnership with the Commerce Commission.
Unit pricing – the secret to saving at the supermarket
Find out more about how to use unit pricing to save at the supermarket.
