Intros
Shermozle
I wasn't at BarCamp but am keenly interested in this proposal, though
I've only read about it tangentially. Can someone give a description
of the proposition, and what was built at BarCamp?
Just some resources I thought might be worth pointing out when arguing
the case here, and some stuff from the UK where the supermarkets are
at least as entrenched as Australia.
1. Unit pricing had an effect
I've long noticed discrepancies in pricing of different units of the
same product. The price of an 800g tin of own-brand tomatoes at
Woolworths was more than two times the price of a 400g tin. That
changed the day unit pricing labels started being put up. Milk and
other categories do the same thing, still, because the unit pricing
labels aren't there yet.
2. Known Value Items
One of the strategies that's been used by UK supermarkets is to ensure
that "Known Value Items", things for which people remember the price,
are targeted and often sold below cost. Things like a loaf of plain
white bread, milk, bananas. The profits are then made on the other
products, which research shows consumers rarely price-check against
other stores. This is the psychology a "Grocery Choice" service can
work against -- if a consumer can put in their usual basket of goods
and price check against their local supermarkets.
3. Data poisoning
A fun project in the UK was to game the Tesco loyalty card scheme.
Regular card swaps were organised, where demographically very
different people would swap cards. So inside the Tesco database
they'd see a student household's usual purchases of beans and cheap
lager switch overnight to the purchases of a family of four concerned
about their health. Probably more useful in the abstract than the
practical, as it would need to be adopted on an enormous scale to have
much effect, and data matching against EFTPOS card numbers would mean
they could wash out the fakes.
Rob Manson
Hi @shermozle, thanks for kicking off the email discussion.
> I wasn't at BarCamp but am keenly interested in this proposal, though
> I've only read about it tangentially. Can someone give a description
> of the proposition, and what was built at BarCamp?
So...nothing specifically was built at #bcs5...just wanted to get a
group together to explore and discuss the crowd sourcing and flashmob
opportunities where we could make a difference.
The idea came from a broader discussion I had with 2 other people at
#bcs5, but I don't want to name them yet until they tell me they're
happy to take the blame 8)
As for the overall idea - here's my plan - but happy to work with the
group to ammend and adapt that to something that works for all of us.
1. Form this group - that seems pretty well under way.
2. Map out the possible outcomes (listed in order of preference)
1. The supermarkets decide to play fair and provide the
data
2. Flashmobs put pressure on the supermarkets who then
decide to play fair and provide the data
3. The data is crowd sourced using mobile phone and web
applications
4. The satus quo persists [least preferred]
3. Use the google group and twitter to discuss and list all of the
possible ideas and how they relate to each other (please feel free to
create pages and start doing this).
4. Get the group to pick which of those ideas we want to take action on
5. Take action.
Throughout this I'd like to engage CHOICE (who have been very
responsive), Gov. and the Supermarkets themselves to open up this
dialogue to involve us - the community.
If you know anyone in any of those groups please invite them and
encourage them to join the discussion.
These are interesting points...what do others think about them?
I'll write up more responses to them in detail soon.
roBman
SeanCurtis
idea for a mobile croudsourcing app which could both make some money
and pressure the Supermarkets into playing nice with their pricing
information. My dev skills are still evolving so I doubt I could build
it all myself - would love to work on it as a pet project if other
people are interested in it...
Rob Manson
Looks like there are quite a few developers on the list and we would
certainly be happy to help.
Ideally as a group we can decide on one or two key projects and then
just work on developing them.
Also, would be best if they were Open Source projects so everyone here
can contribute - and other regions may like to benefit from this too.
Feel free to put some notes in the pages section of the google group,
email a broader description or just put a description on your own site
and then email around or tweet the link.
Thanks for your contribution...
roBman