Food Maxx was doing basket comparisons before COVID in Sparks and Carson City- literally a cart with a plastic cover over it showing their receipt and the receipt of some other store; Raleys, Smiths, Wal Mart, etc. What is interesting is the pricing at Food Maxx seems stronger now, than it did back then.HCal wrote: ↑December 13th, 2021, 11:32 pm
It's definitely very easy to manipulate these things by choosing items (brand, size, flavor) that you have on sale but the competition doesn't. Also there are club card prices, and some stores like Safeway now have personalized pricing on many items.
In the '90s, there were several lawsuits in California between supermarket chains accusing each other of deceiving customers. I don't know what the outcome was, but I haven't seen receipt total comparisons like this in a long time, so I assume the stores decided it wasn't worth the hassle. Winco does post comparison prices on individual items (in my area, usually with FoodMaxx, Albertsons and Walmart), and Grocery Outlet references "elsewhere" without specifying the name of the other store.
Generally speaking I am noticing stores slowest to increase prices in the current environment: Smiths, Food Maxx/Save Mart, and WinCo. The other chains, especially Safeway, but also including Wal Mart, are very quick to increase prices at the present time. Historically I am extremely unimpressed with Food Maxx/Save Mart but recently the pricing situation at Safeway and Raleys has pushed me to purchase more from Food Maxx/Save Mart and I have no complaints about their mix or quality. The low volume Save Marts still have lousy perimeters and are understaffed, but center store is pretty good, due to the low volume and being rather over-SKUed in my opinion (better than how under SKUed they were 10 years ago), they seem to keep in stock well.
WinCo has individual item level price comparisons posted and I've even seen them post for Sprouts on some items; it seems to depend who the nearby competitor is.