Wed Apr 25 06:41:00 UTC 2012
The Checkers supermarket chain announced today that it has saved its customers over R200 million rand so far this year and committed to keep saving consumers money.
Checkers has managed to save South Africans this amount through aggressive discounting and holding prices lower for longer across more products. These actions resulted in Checkers’ selling prices consistently remaining well below South Africa’s official monthly food inflation rate as calculated by Statistics South Africa over the past year.
In an environment where South African consumers are facing financial pressures ranging from rising inflation, soaring petrol and electricity costs to an expanded toll road network, Checkers has done everything in its power to give consumers some relief in the cost of their grocery bill.
“As the largest supermarket retailer in Africa, the Group is in a position to buy in bulk and thus offer bigger discounts,” said Whitey Basson, chief executive of the Shoprite Group. “Savings are also made possible through constantly improved business efficiencies as a result of world class sourcing abilities, centralised distribution and sophisticated information technology systems which support our operations.
“We also have the largest distribution centres in South Africa which allow us to buy in against price increases, giving the Group the ability to hold its prices lower for longer when price increases occur,” he said.
Commenting on loyalty programmes Basson said that while certain customers display an interest in them, the costs of setting up a loyalty card program were significant and at this stage he was happy to rather keep the prices of Checkers’ groceries as low as possible.