Petr Král from FIR in Czech TV: Food and Drugstore Price Comparison – Cheapest Products on the Shelf

How have food and drug prices changed over the last six months? Ing. Petr Král, Ph.D., Head of the Department of International Business, together with the editorial team of the journalistic broadcast called Černé ovce conducted a survey of prices in the Czech Republic, Germany and Slovakia in 6 different supermarket chains and specialised drug stores.

The consumer basket was constructed differently than in previous reports, when the focus was not on specific brands, but on the cheapest products on the shelf. In the first episode, 13 staple foods such as apples, potatoes, eggs, fresh bread, white yoghurt and milk were chosen, and in the second episode, 13 drugstore products such as tissues, toilet paper and solid soap.

The results of the survey vary considerably between staple foods and drug products. In the case of staple foods, the Czech Republic comes out as the cheapest, while Germany is the most expensive. “At the moment, when we actually left out branded products, the Czech Republic jumped significantly in the ranking compared to Germany. It turned out that while before it always came out that the Czech Republic was significantly more expensive than Germany and other neighbouring countries for branded products, suddenly in a situation where we were looking for the cheapest option, we saw that it was actually possible to buy in the Czech Republic at similar prices as in Germany or even at lower prices,” summarises Ing. Petr Král, Ph.D.

In the case of drugstore products, the results of the survey are different – Germany comes out significantly cheaper and Slovakia, on the contrary, as the most expensive. The investigation is concluded by Ing. Petr Král, Ph.D.: “We saw in the Czech Republic and actually in all three countries compared, but in the Czech Republic the difference was quite marked, that you can save quite significantly by buying drugstore drugs in a specialised drugstore chain, when in fact the purchase in the supermarket of the cheapest drugstore was basically half as expensive as the same purchase when we made it in a drugstore chain. So it’s definitely worthwhile for consumers to go to a specialist store, where there is, after all, more choice, but the prices are significantly lower than in the supermarkets.”

The report on staple foods can be found HERE. (Czech language only.)

A report on drugstore products can be found HERE. (Czech language only.)

Ing. Petr Král, Ph.D., has been the Head of the Department of International Business since 2014. He specializes in international marketing, especially international marketing communication. He has been a visiting professor at partner universities abroad (France, Austria, Latvia, China, USA). He also teaches in the English programmes International Business and CEMS at the Prague University of Economics and Business. He is a member of the Faculty Group for Marketing in the international strategic alliance CEMS. He has carried out several research and projects in cooperation with corporate partners of VŠE. As a lecturer, he has been active in the Export Academy of Czech Trade and in courses of Sports Diplomacy organized by FIR in cooperation with the Czech Olympic Committee. In practice, he mainly advises small and medium-sized Czech companies expanding into the German market.