KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 14 — As the cost of living rises on the back of a weak ringgit and the imposition of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), more and more Malaysians are looking for ways to get more bang for their buck. Or in this case, ringgit.
Financial comparison site CompareHero.my decided to find out just how much some of these branded goods cost at the various retail outlets.
Mark Reijman, CompareHero.my managing director, explained that the firm’s aim is to help Malaysians save time and money when making financial choices, besides arming them with better information to get more value for their money.
“We decided to do the survey on the prices of popular brands as a large portion of a household’s budget goes into groceries.
“As we wanted to give insight to the people with the most pressing budget pressure, we decided to focus the research on retail chains that are considered affordable, hence Isetan, Cold Storage, Jaya (Grocer) were excluded and KR1M, Mydin and Tesco were included,” he told Malay Mail Online in a recent interview. KR1M refers to the government initiative Kedai Rakyat 1Malaysia.
In CompareHero.my’s survey of the prices of six shortlisted branded items across six retail chain outlets in the Klang Valley, it said that convenience stores such as 99 Speedmart and KK Super Mart were found to be slightly more expensive as expected, due to their business model where consumers pay more for convenience in terms of location and opening hours.
“What we did find surprising was, out of the six products, for three of the products, Mydin was actually the cheapest.”
Coincidentally, Mydin operates the majority of the KR1M stores.
Of the six products, Mydin had the cheapest 10kg sack of rice at RM21.59, the cheapest 185g can of chilli tuna under Ayam Brand at RM5.30 and the cheapest Maggi tomato sauce of 475g at RM2.88, against KR1M’s pricing of RM23.90, RM5.50 and RM3.39.
Reijman noted that KR1M only managed to beat the other retail chains’ pricing in one out of six products compared, while 99 Speedmart and Tesco similarly managed to offer the cheapest price for one product each and Giant and KK Super Mart lost out in the pricing comparison.
CompareHero.my’s survey was carried out on October 26 and 27, with an initial 16 other items not included in the final price comparison exercise as the same brand at the same volume was not available across the board at all six retail chains’ outlets, Reijman said.
Even with the 16 other branded goods, Reijman said KR1M failed to offer the lowest price for most of the products when compared against the other outlets.
“So that basically leads us at least to the conclusion or recommendation to the public that if you go to a KR1M store not for the KR1M branded products, but for other brands like Maggi, Ayam Brand or Twisties, then you should be aware that there might be another store, for example Mydin, could also be Tesco that actually has a cheaper price,” he explained when speaking about the survey findings.
This indicates that the price advantage of KR1M may lie only with its generic offerings under the 1Malaysia brand even though the retail chain also offers branded goods in order to give consumers more choices.
“I think some other things that people could do to save money if they are facing pressure with the budget is to buy the house brands instead of premium brands, because sometimes these products even come out of the same factories and the quality is pretty much the same but the price is much more affordable,” Reijman said, adding that consumers could also opt to buy in bulk during promotions.
The locations of the six stores surveyed were in the Klang Valley, with the KR1M outlet in Damansara Utama, the Mydin outlet in Subang, Tesco in Mutiara Damansara, 99 Speedmart and KK Super Mart in Titiwangsa and Giant in Kuala Lumpur.
CompareHero.my said it believed that these locations would not affect the price comparison as it was restricted to the Klang Valley, and was not a case of east Malaysian prices against peninsular Malaysian prices.
On October 29, Domestic Trade, Co-operatives and Consumerism Deputy Minister Ahmad Bashah Md Hanipah reportedly told Parliament that the KR1M programme has recorded total sales of RM829 million from its 170 outlets nationwide since it was initiated in 2011, with the government’s cost totalling RM82.5 million for the same.
Reijman said that CompareHero.my decided to compare branded goods in this recent survey as the pricing comparison would be more objective, instead of comparing in-house brands of the various retail chains due to variables such as consumers’ taste and perceived quality differences.
CompareHero.my, which was started in 2013, currently provides free comparison of all the credit cards, personal loans and broadband plans available in the market, earning revenue only when its client referrals are made to the banking institutions or companies that have direct relationship with it. It also provides money-saving tips on its blog.
Reijman said the recent injection of US$40 million into the regional group which the firm is part of meant that CompareHero.my has sufficient resources to be independent and provide honest product comparisons, also adding that the site offers better insights than its competitors into the fine print of financial products.
The company claims to be among the top three financial comparison sites in Malaysia now and aims to be the main provider of such personal finance advice in the future, but declined to disclose the number of customers it had aided or its unique viewer traffic due to such information being confidential.
Other financial comparison sites catering to Malaysians are iMoney.my and RinggitPlus.com.
