Should Small Shops Lower Their Prices?
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Should the small stores like Tesco Express, Sainsbury's Local and Morrisons Daily lower their prices?
They tend to charge higher prices in their smaller stores and often stock none to little of their budget lines.
No I don’t think they can afford to. People only buy small items from convenience stores not a weekly shop.
Pjran People round my way use the local Tesco to do their weekly shop, this may be because we live in a village and it is easier for them then to go into the nearest town.
eyeballkerry I don’t think I would be able to do a big shop at our local convenience store, it just doesn’t keep much choice. Maybe it’s worth considering doing an online order with delivery.
Pjran just watching an inquiry into this, every single supermarket is up in their profits and are making more than then did post pandemic. Take what you will with that 
Yes they absolutely should. Independent stores I understand needing to have higher prices but the big supermarkets have no excuse they make plenty of money. So why charge 80p for cheese straws in one shop and £1.60 in another.
Midnightflower They charge more because they know that most of the people will shop there anyway, as said, for convenience. I can see it, especially in big cities like London. You work all day, hours lost inside the public transport. You get home and you have no milk and bread, you are not going to travel another half an hour to a big shop and decide to pay the price.
Well their overheads are less so I don't see why they can't. It seems they are overcharging purely because they feel the customer should pay for the convenience.
There may be reasons I don't know about but it does seem wrong as pro rata it should all work out the same.
Lynibis The overheads aren't necessarily lower % wise when compare to the bigger stores. It's a smaller space, yes, but they still have all the same bills 
SamGoodship maybe, but I was thinking smaller premises use less energy, less staff means less wage bill, less turnover means less to pay for goods, I don't really know, I guess convenience comes at a price.
Independent stores it depends on what they sell. There are certain places I go to online or local because of customer service over price. The likes of tesco can afford to cut prices. I go to my local veg shop because of quality and customer service. It's slightly more expensive but the produce lasts longer
Difficult one on one hand yes they should as they can afford to,on the other hand if they did many other shops nearby who are privately owned and can't afford to reduce prices maybe adversely affected
by such a practice.
Yes, they should. I only go into their stores if I have forgotten to buy an essential item like milk, fruits and fruit juice or I have run out of that particular item.
Pretty sure running costs for a convenience store are much higher so their margin per item must be higher. I don't think its realistic to expect a convenience store to match a full size supermarket in prices they never have in the past and never will in the future unless there is some sort of government intervention to aid smaller businesses and make business rates etc much lower for smaller premises. Big supermarkets have efficiency of scale and huge footfalls of customers.
Tesco Express has some token items that are the same price as the main Tesco supermarkets and occasionally an offer which is cheaper but generally prices will be higher. However I find Tesco Express a fair bit cheaper than Spar, Coop, McColls are other convenience stores for many items. So maybe there is some small benefit to Tesco Express being linked to a larger operation. Also Tesco own 'One Stop' stores plus they own the Booker group that has many independent convenience stores as customers and also runs its own convenience stores too 'Premier'. So Tesco have a huge amount of convenience stores under their umbrella.
One thing about convenience stores is because they have less footfall I find their short life reductions are more aggressively reduced at times. So if you go in at the right time you can save significant money over the big supermarkets.
In Japan all the convenience stores have the same prices regardless of location which made me realise that being ripped off by stores in certain locations doesn’t need to be done.
jms19 Isn't that the same here for chain convenience stores? It's only the independent convenience stores that set their prices independently. I have about 3 Tesco Express stores and 4 Coop stores and all the Tesco Express stores have the same prices. Same situation at Coop stores.
BonzoBanana i always thought that the “local” versions of big supermarkets were more expensive. For example a bottle of flavoured fizzy water was 45p in the big store but about 70p in the smaller sainsburys.
You might be right though.
jms19 Yes of course the convenience stores have higher prices to the supermarkets but most convenience store chains have the same price in each of their convenience stores except perhaps london where prices seem to go higher on occasion.
BonzoBanana that’s what i mean, in big cities it can be more and in airports/train stations. Everywhere in japan it’s reasonable, even at disneyland it was a lot cheaper than disney would be in paris, america etc
jms19 Japan seems to prioritise small shops this could be because they are so densely populated and forcing people to travel large distances to get food and suppliers makes congestion even worse so you see stores on every block almost. Also Japan loves vending machines. I've watched people in Japan who cycle and its like they only have to stop and look around to see a vending machine selling coffee or chilled drinks. There are 4 million vending machines in Japan! The ultimate in small convenience stores I guess.
If they can they should to remain competitive, but the biggest costs nowaday are Energy and rent which makes it difficult to reduce their prices unfortunately.
When I read the title, I thought you meant small independent stores and so my answer was no. If it's one of the big four, I think it depends if it's a franchise or part of the main company. If it's the later, it depends on the business rates they are paying, what the operating costs are and they need to make a business decision to see if they could introduce more budget items. You pay for convenience.
Oh, smaller outlets of the big boys rather than the 'local mini mart' type of place you mean?
Well... I'd say; should they - yes. Will they - probably not. Not necessarily because of convenience, here we have all the big stores (bar Morrisons and Waitrose) and Tesco and Asda are - Sundays aside - open longer than most of the convenience stores, but economies of scale (the big stores tend to be bigger).
I appreciate that my point above will probably be pulled apart quite easily (e.g. Aldi), as there are arguments (valid and otherwise) for both sides, but there we are.
One thing that makes me wonder though - when it comes to convenience/smaller stores Tesco has; Tesco Express, One Stop and Premier (the latter owned via Booker), with the latter having some quite dramatic offers at times. What makes me wonder though is why have three brands doing broadly the same thing? It does come across a little odd and an inefficient use of resources.
tinker411 I'm sure Tesco and Booker combine their buying power so when they go to a supplier they can request savings for a much larger order its just the order will be split into different packaging for different Tesco retail operations. I think a year or so back Tesco and Carrefour had some agreement where they would buy product together to get greater savings in the end the agreement ended but they were using their combined buying power to get an even better deal out of suppliers. However some might see this as exploitation of suppliers.
Yes they should because they are part of big stores companies if they had the money thats why they opened those stores & they give senseless reasons to sell stuff at higher prices in those small stores
Whilst some smaller businesses take advantage of their location and lack of competition it's also true that most smaller businesses do struggle to make profit. Tescos , Sainsbobs and all the big boys don't ask a supplier how much for the things they're buying....they tell them how much they will pay for them. It also depends on your location and if you've business rates to pay and rent costs. There is no simple answer.
Addendum....in the case of the Tesco Express type shops . Yes they should definitely lower their prices!
I rarely use convenience stores, because they are more expensive and I'm lucky that I'm within a 5 minute drive of an Asda, Lidl, Aldi and Tesco. I occasionally use the shop at the petrol garage, but it is an independent shop and is actually very reasonable for a convenience store, it stocks loads of value items.
No, they make less than the giant grocery stores.
Those small shops are there to help old folks and people who can't access the grocery stores everyone else uses as it's too far from them or whatnot.
I’m not sure if they can afford to with having a lot less passing trade than the big stores
Don’t get me wrong tho sometimes I look at their prices and think jeez! Especially with the cost of living
Just so everyone knows there is currently a inquiry going on, every single one of those supermarkets are up in their profits (pre pandemic). All of this is greed!
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