The Price of Groceries - March 2011 Update
March means it's that time of year again to take our annual look at grocery prices - comparing not only price changes over the years, but also the price difference between the UK and Turkey.
Since we started this review in 2009, we have kept the basket as similar as possible; this year we have lost just one item which we couldn't compare. In 2011 our basket contains 43 items, across 8 different categories: Cleaning, Dairy, Drinks, Fish & Meat, Fruit & Veg, Pantry, and Personal Snacks.
As previously, we have used Migros as the Turkish supermarket, and Sainsbury's as the UK Supermarket. For Pound to Lira conversions we have used the rate applicable at the time of the conversion (2.55 in 2011 prices, 2.33 in 2010 prices, 2.45 in 2009).
For full details of the items contained in the basket, and all the pricing information, please click the image below to download a PDF:
OK, let's start the review by looking at how the overall basket looks this year against previous years. In 2011 our Migros basket came to a total of 355TL (versus 343TL in 2010, and 267TL in 2009). Our Sainsbury's basket (converted at the appropriate rate) came to 418TL (versus 348TL in 2010, and 354TL in 2009). We can see this as a graphic below. It's surprising here to see that the Migros price hasn't increased much from 2010 - only 3% in fact - which is lower than the rate of inflation. The Sainsbury's basket meanwhile increased by about 20%. This makes the Migros basket an overall 18% cheaper than the Sainsbury's basket.
We can see how the price changes vary by category by looking at the following two graphs:
First, the Sainsbury's graph shows increases across all categories with the exception of the Dairy category. Changes vary from +5% through to 34% in the Cleaning category.
In contrast to the Sainsbury's graph, the Migros price changes vary far more. Especially of note here, the Fruit & Veg category has increased around 33%. Drinks and Fish & Meat have increased a small amount. Cleaning, Dairy, and Personal items have all decreased.
Let's now look at just the Migros basket, and how this has changed over the last 3 years:
And the Sainsbury's basket over the last 3 years:
Finally, let's take a look at the price changes by category and by supermarket in 2011:
