ONLINE PRICES RISE DUE TO PANDEMIC
Some cooking and cleaning products have seen a rise in prices by 5% over 14 weeks of lockdown
CLEANING sprays and tomato puree are among the high demand items that have increased in price since the pandemic began. Both products have seen online prices rise by 5.1% compared to the week before lockdown (week beginning 16 March), with the largest increase in their prices impacting consumers from the first week of April.
Speaking to the BBC in April, a Tesco spokesperson said the supermarket had not increased the price of cleaning spray and any price rises across its range were due to the fact it stopped multi-buy offers on some products to stop shoppers stockpiling essential items. Between 16 March and 21 June, the Office for National Statistics collected figures from many large online UK retailers to help understand the impact Covid-19 has had on products bought frequently online.
The basket of goods includes a range of household and hygiene products, health products and longlife food.
Food items have seen an overall 0.5% increase in prices and household items have seen a 0.3% increase between weeks 1 and 14.
However, the overall prices of all the items in the basket has reduced by 0.3% since March due to larger changes for some items. Vitamin C is 5% cheaper online than in March, the largest overall decrease. It initially increased in price by over the first three weeks of lockdown before dropping steadily in the weeks up to 8 June before rising in price again. Anti-bacterial hand wipes have reduced in price by 2.8% over the 14 weeks.
The overall fall for anti-bacterial cleaning wipes was smaller at 0.2% - they saw a fluctuation in online prices over the first seven weeks before increasing by 2.6% in a week. However, since 15 June, prices have reduced by 2.2%.
Online long-life milk prices, another big overall fall, similarly remained relatively steady during the first 13 weeks of lockdown, before seeing a drop of 2.7% in the week beginning 15 June as well.
Liliana Danila, Economist at the British Retail Consortium said: “It is normal for prices to fluctuate from week to week as a result of fierce competition and market conditions. “Nonetheless, consumers continue to benefit from great value in local supermarkets across the country, even as retailers face rising costs caused by coronavirus."
The ONS said the statistics are experimental and therefore subject to revision as methods are developed. They should not be used instead of official consumer price statistics.
Out of stock products have been removed where these are clearly labelled, however there may be products out of stock that have still been included for some retailers.