In a controversial move amid rising scrutiny over grocery prices, Foodstuffs has quietly removed the “sort by price” option from the websites of its major supermarket brands, New World and Pak’nSave.
The function had allowed shoppers to search for items based on price – a valuable tool for consumers managing their budgets.
Jessica Walker, acting head of research and advocacy at Consumer NZ, criticised the timing of the change, calling it “bizarre” during a cost-of-living crisis.
“It’s nonsensical that two of our biggest supermarkets would move away from enabling online shoppers to browse products by price,” Walker said, adding that the change restricts consumers’ ability to find the best deals quickly.
The group also observed that apart from removing the price sorting functionality, the website prioritises the search results to display its in-house brand, Pams.
“Consumer plugged 10 different everyday items into the search engines on the websites for New World and Pak’nSave: Butter, colby cheese, tinned tomatoes, white sugar, flour, milk, spinach, almond milk, toilet paper and baked beans,” said the organisation.
“In almost every search, Pams products came up as the first result, both in the drop-down search function and the ranked search results. Pams products for butter, colby cheese, tinned tomatoes, white sugar, flour, milk, spinach and almond milk came first; for toilet paper, a Pams product was fourth; for baked beans, it was third.”
Foodstuffs – which owns both supermarket chains – defended the decision, saying it is part of an ongoing digital platform upgrade.
The grocer told Consumer NZ that it would re-introduce unit pricing to enhance price transparency; however, they did not specify when.
Meanwhile, Foodstuffs’ competitor, Woolworths New Zealand, told Consumer NZ that it has no plans to remove the “sort by price” option from its online platforms.
“We know that our online customers use the sorting and filtering options to find the best value, and we have recently made these options more prominent,” said Woolworths NZ.
Meanwhile, marketing expert Bodo Lang from Massey University was taken aback by the change, prompting him to verify it himself.
“My experience with e-commerce platforms is that even the most basic platforms can sort products by price,” he continued.
Lang said that making unit prices available means supermarkets should add “unit pricing” as a sorting function and remove the basic price sort feature as counterproductive.
“This suggests that Foodstuffs may have deliberately disabled this functionality,” he added.
Foodstuffs has not yet responded to Inside Retail‘s request for comment.
