UK shoppers risk spending almost a fifth more using Google Shopping

· Research reveals Google Shopping is almost 20% more expensive than shopping elsewhere
· Analysis of a basket of goods found that Google Shopping costs shoppers £328.60 more than on PriceSpy
· Mobile phones, footwear and headphones showed the biggest price differences

UK shoppers are facing paying almost a fifth more on items when making online purchases through Google Shopping. This is when compared to price comparison services, across several separate categories, new research has revealed.

The independent research, conducted by Grant Thornton on price comparison service PriceSpy and Google Shopping, found that in the UK prices on the latter are 17.6% higher on average. The research reviewed 100 products on both services in the UK market, across 10 separate categories.

Within the categories, trainers and casual shoes (35%), mobile phones (31%) and running shoes (30%) have the biggest price differences across the two platforms. PriceSpy also undertook further research by investigating the price of a basket of goods with specific products from each of the categories researched.

This basket of goods compares the prices of six popular items on both platforms, namely, jackets, running shoes, TVs, headphones, fridge freezers and perfume. When totalled, the same items cost £328.60 more on Google Shopping.

In the past year, online shopping has reached an all-time high in the UK. According to the ONS, online shopping now accounts for 34.7% of total UK sales. Data by Statista reveals 87% of UK shoppers made an online purchase in 2020.

PriceSpy UK country manager, Ossie Bayram, said: “The pandemic, lockdowns and subsequent shop closures have led to a record number of shoppers regularly buying items online. Whilst this has been vital in enabling consumers to get hold of essential items, shoppers could unwittingly overlook value for convenience and risk overpaying for items by taking the first option offered.

“Google Shopping is no doubt a useful tool for finding products and retailers, but we want to warn consumers that they can’t assume it offers the best prices. Instead, do your own research and shop around across multiple retailers. Nobody needs or deserves to get ripped off. Taking time to research the best product and the best price will always pay for itself."

 

ENDS

Media enquiries
For more information or to request any imagery: Tushar Parmar/ 07428 584 468 / tushar@milkandhoneypr.com Lizzie Elkin / 07824 832 106 / lizzie@milkandhoneypr.com

Methodology:
Grant Thornton's research: This was from a list of 100 products, which includes the 10 most popular products in the 10 most popular categories based on web traffic data in the United Kingdom. The VPN software F-secure Freedome was installed in order to collect data from each market as a consumer in the specific market.

Data collection: The data collection was performed by two associates at Grant Thornton between 25 November and 7 December 2020. Data collection was performed for one country at a time by searching for the products in Google and PriceSpy.

Basket of goods:
PriceSpy compared popular products in the categories of jackets, running shoes, TVs, headphones, fridge freezers and perfume on 12th May 2021. For fair comparison with Google Shopping, PriceSpy took the cheapest price available in GBP from both platforms.

About PriceSpy
PriceSpy is a comprehensive price & product comparison service used by millions of consumers every month. It helps consumers find, discover, research and compare products. PriceSpy has 5,520,000 indexed prices, 829,000 products, 6,910,000 product properties, along with hundreds of thousands of product and shop ratings. Providing a fully impartial comparison service for consumers and a deep depository of price data for retailers. Prisjakt launched in the year 2000 and is Sweden's largest price comparison service. The service is known in Sweden and Norway as Prisjakt, and in the UK and New Zealand as PriceSpy.

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