"Of all the supermarkets that offer shopping online, it is more expensive to buy an average 'basket' of groceries from Sainsbury."

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Hypothesis

“Of all the supermarkets that offer shopping online, it is more expensive to buy an average ‘basket’ of groceries from Sainsbury.”

Aim

It was the aim of this project to compare, using statistical techniques, the prices of typical ‘baskets’ of groceries that can be bought from supermarkets offering a service via the internet.

Design & Planning

This study was designed to deal with an everyday subject that would be of use to the reader and myself. Its results would be useful particularly for people with limited mobility, for example, because the sample of supermarkets chosen offer a delivery service.

I decided to gather my data from shops online as it was important that the data was easy to access, as I had to gather it in a limited amount of time. It would have taken me much more time if I visited the actual shops.

When planning my investigation, I made myself a timetable so that I knew I would have sufficient time to gather my data but also be left with time to analyse it and present my findings.

Identification of Data

The samples chosen were:

  • Supermarkets selling groceries online - I used ‘Google.com’ to search for relevant supermarkets.
  • Online grocers offering a delivery service – I found quite a few shops that delivered to England but I decided that it would be sensible to do just four with my limited amount of time in mind.
  • A sample of products which might be purchased by a family household in its weekly shop – for this I analysed past receipts from my own family weekly shop. This constituted my initial ‘basket’ of groceries.
  • The prices for each of the items in the ‘basket’ - cheapest and dearest sold on the site, for the same commodity in the same volume or weight.

The variables were the availability of products, prices and quantities.

When choosing which products I was going to find the prices of, I had to make sure they were things that every supermarket would sell.

I also had to make sure that when I was on the websites looking for the prices, I chose the cheapest and most expensive of the selection. I had to do this as most shops sold more than one brand and each brand was charged at a different price. The price would also differ if the weights and sizes of the groceries were different, so I had to make sure that I ‘bought’ the same amounts of each item. This was so that I was comparing ‘like with like’. These were my sampling criteria.

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Another variable was the delivery charge. Some supermarkets didn’t have one, and others had different charges depending on how far away the customer lived.  I averaged out the delivery charge, where necessary, for each supermarket.

Primary/Secondary Sources of Data

I decided to use primary data, as I then knew that an un-biased person had collected it, and I knew that my data was accurate. The only drawback was that it took me quite some time to gather the data.

If I had decided to use secondary data, it would most likely have been much less time ...

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