Putting technology to use: SMS service allows Italian shoppers to check and compare best food prices while at the market

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The rising cost of food is a growing concern for many people across the world. There have been protests, and even riots, in countries including Mexico, India and Egypt, clear evidence of the struggle that many people are now facing. However, if Italians feel that their local food retailer is charging unreasonable prices, they can now call on a new service to help them haggle or walk away. Thanks to a short message service (SMS) text system set up jointly by the Italian agriculture ministry and consumer associations, shoppers can check the average price of different foods in northern, central and southern Italy.

Italy’s Department of Agriculture, Food & Forestry, along with consumer organisations, have come up with the SMS Consumatori service www.smsconsumatori.it, which tracks prices for over 80 types of fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy products and so on. To use the service, shoppers send a text message to 47947 for free, typing the name of the product they want a price for. They get a reply straightaway listing both a wholesale price and average retail prices in the north, centre and south. If a product comes in varieties, the service sends separate messages for each of the most popular ones.

SMS Consumatori sources information from 2,200 different stores, such as butchers, market stalls and discount stores, and covers the whole country. Prices are updated from Tuesday to Saturday. A very good feature is that people can fill a virtual shopping cart and see what its average cost would be. According to Jote Bassi, vice-president global sales and marketing at messaging services provider Anam, which is headquartered in Dublin, SMS Consumatori is a great use of SMS technology and yet more evidence of the importance to both consumers and operators of SMS services in general.

With prices spiraling out of control in some parts of the world, some people feel that it is high time consumers could check just how much traders are profiting. BBC reporter Emma Wallis from BBC World Service's Culture Shock programme decided to find out how much 2kg of tomatoes cost in a market in Rome. She found that the wholesale price of a kilo of cherry tomatoes is 69 euro cents (54p). Whereas the retail price in the north is 2.9 euros, in central Italy it is 2.8 euros, while in the south its 1.85 euros. By contrast, for bigger tomatoes the wholesale price is 62 cents compared with 2.15 euros in the north, 1.85 euros in central and 1.50 euros in the south. However, the tomatoes are bought by the wholesalers for only 22 cents a kilo from the farmers.

According to Tom Standage, business editor at The Economist magazine, markets are more efficient when you have more information. "If you are in a supermarket and there's a price for tomatoes and that's the only piece of information you have, you've got no idea whether you should be protesting by not buying it," he says. He explains that for supply and demand to work at its best, consumers need to be able to compare different prices from suppliers on the spot, something the texting service and others like it should help make easier. "There are even services where you can scan a barcode in with your mobile phone and it tells you how much the internet retailers are selling a particular product for," he says.

With many analysts warning that high food costs are here to stay, Italian consumer are unlikely to be the only ones hoping to find the High Street's best prices.

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Photos courtesy of AFP, SiliconRepublic.com, and CTV.ca

Original Source: BBC News and SiliconRepublic.com