CHAPTER 22
Price Matching
Our first Guerrilla Grocery Shopping weapon is price matching. Rather than rushing around to all the stores in the area to buy the items they have on sale for the week, you go to one store that honors other stores’ sale prices and get everything there. That’s price matching. Generally, there is at least one grocery store in an area that will honor its competitors’ sale prices as a way of drawing business.
Most grocery stores have a few sale items each week that are so cheap the store loses money on them. They offer them because they figure while you’re there buying ultra cheap bread, you’ll also buy high-priced peanut butter and jelly to go on that bread. The trick of price matching is to pick off the most deeply discounted sale items of the week all at one store. That way, you save time, you save gas, and you save money.
In this chapter, learn to SAVE BIG by:
• Finding out if your local grocery stores price- match.
• Looking up sale prices online so you don’t have to slog through store circulars.
• Trying out big national chains that price- match.
• Getting store brands on sale at a different store!
How to Price- Match
Here we go. Guerrilla Grocery Shopping 101. The first step to price matching is to find a store that does it. How do you do that? This is low-tech: You ask. Many stores have a “Don’t tell unless they ask” policy. In other words, they offer price matching but they don’t advertise it. So call around. You may find that the policy varies within chains, so be sure to check with the local store you plan to frequent. Most will only price-match close competitors within a certain mile radius.
Once you find a store that price-matches, it’s important for you to get a grip on its policy. Some stores require you to hand over their competitor’s circular—from a newspaper, a direct mail flyer or the Internet—as proof of a lower price available elsewhere. Other stores will take your word for it. A few have competitors’ circulars at the cash register for the clerk to reference, so all you have to do is ask. Find out which level of proof your store requires and be ready to rumble.
Try for One-Time Price Matching
Even stores without a price-matching policy will sometimes do it on a one-time basis. Let’s say you’ re having a frantic week and you notice the store across town is having a once-in-a-lifetime sale on Cheerios, but you just can’ t make it there. A Guerrilla Grocery Shopper will check to see if their local store will price-match this one item this one time. Be sure to ask the store manager (not a cashier) and be pleasant and polite.
When you get to the store that price- matches, it’s a good idea to put all your price-match items in one area of your cart, then load them on the belt together. When that merchandise comes up on the belt, explain that you are price- matching and the clerk will know just what to do.
If you have more than one choice of stores that price- match, try to shop at one that matches and has consistently low prices overall. You will inevitably need some items that aren’t on sale anywhere and can’t be price matched, so it’s helpful if your chosen store has low everyday prices across the board.
A Word about Walmart
The mother of all price-matchers is Walmart, which has groceries at many of its stores now. Walmart will match the price of any store in your local market. (No wonder mom-and-pop stores hate this monolith.) The megastore doesn’t offer deep weekly discounts like traditional grocery stores, but it will honor their weekly discounts. Often, Guerrilla Grocery Shoppers don’t even have to bring the competitor’s circular as proof. Walmart will honor not only advertised specials but also club card savings. And Walmart’s own prices are typically low, for those items you need that aren’t on sale anywhere.
A few important things to keep in mind when price-matching at Walmart:
1. Same brand, same size. You need to find the same brand and size to get the match. If you see a sale ad that does not specify a brand, Walmart will match that price, as long as you find the same type and size of product.
2. You need a specific price. Walmart honors sales in which a specific price is named, like “Campbell’s Soup: $1.” It doesn’t honor percentage-off sales where the ad just says “Campbell’s Soup: 40% off” because its original prices are already lower on a daily basis. Walmart also will not price-match buy-one-get-one-free deals being offered at other stores.
3. Store brand for store brand. If some other chain is having a sale on its store brand, Walmart will honor it with its own store brand as long as it is the same size and type of product.
4. Coupons., Walmart takes coupons but does not match other chains’ double or triple coupon offers.
5. Know your geography. Check with your local Walmart, because different stores use a different radius as their cutoff. For instance, one Walmart may match every competitor within 25 miles whereas another may limit it to 10 miles.
Target Matches Walmart Move for Move
In an effort to compete with its archrival, Walmart, Target now carries groceries and is starting to price-match in its Super-Target stores. Even regular Targets offer some foods and many personal care and household items. Be sure to ask the details of the local price-matching policy, so you’ll know how to use it and abuse it to the max.
An Easier Way to Price- Match
I know what you’re thinking. Who has time to flip through a zillion circulars, then bring the whole unwieldy pile to the store and browbeat some clerk into giving you the match? You don’t have to. All hail the Internet! There is a better way! Read on, Guerrilla Grocery Shoppers.
Set up an Online Shopping E-Mail Address
I have a separate e-mail address I use just for online shopping. Most Internet service providers allow you to have multiple screen names. This way all the advertisements and coupons that stores send won’ t clog up your main e-mail account. But you can still check your shopping account whenever you want to make sure you don’ t miss out on any great offers.
All you do is go to the groundbreaking website
www.CouponMom.com, developed by my sweet and savvy friend Stephanie Nelson. Stephanie’s ideas for organizing and automating grocery deals were so innovative that they earned her a spot first on
Good Morning America and later appearances on the
Today Show. I’ll tell you how to use her site to SAVE BIG with coupons in Chapter 24, but you can also use it just for price matching.
CouponMom.com is a free service. To sign up, all you have to do is provide an e-mail address and create a password. Once you have registered, click on “Grocery Deals by State” and you will see a list of grocery and drugstores in 44 states. (If your state or store is not listed, read Stephanie’s instructions for how to use her site to create your own best buys list.) Then click on your state and store.
Voila! It’s like looking at the store circular, only better because the list is organized alphabetically by brand name, and the far right column tells you what percent discount you’re getting off the regular price! I love that, because when you see $1.49 for Skippy peanut butter, you may not know how good a deal that is. The CouponMom website tells you it’s 57 percent off! Guerrilla Grocery Shoppers scoop up deals like that!
Price Beating Beats Price Matching
Some stores will do better than price-match. When you’re asking around about price-matching policies, be sure to look for stores that beat their competitor’s prices rather than just matching them. For example, Lowe’s and Home Depot both promise to beat each other’s prices by 10 percent. Price-beating is a particularly valuable tool when stores carry many of the same items.
The CouponMom website has little boxes you can check next to the products you want. Repeat the process, looking at the sales lists for every store in your area, until you’ve found all the biggest bargains. When you’re done, you can print out a shopping list with just those items on it. Then take your handy list of the week’s big sale items from multiple stores and march into one store that price-matches. Quickly find all your items and head to the register.
See if your store will accept the CouponMom list as your proof of other stores’ sale prices. Many stores do not even require you to provide proof, so this should work. If your store is a stickler about having store circulars in hand, then get in the habit of keeping the circulars that come in the mail and the newspaper every week. Just have them with you. You don’t even have to look at them unless the clerk asks you at the register.
Alternatively, you can go high-tech and print out the circular from the store’s website. You may also like the website
www.MyGroceryDeals.com, which aggregates hundreds of store circulars all in one place. A final resource is
www.ShopLocal.com, where you can search by product, find the store circular with the lowest price, and print out the page you need.
Price Matching to the Rescue
I once tried out this online price-matching strategy on behalf of a Dallas mom named Tawawna B. All the Good Morning America financial experts were trying to help her find ways to manage her money because right after she finally pursued her dream and went back to graduate school, her husband got laid off.
To show her the potential of price matching, I chose five items Tawawna’s family buys every week and used
CouponMom.com to shop the sales at three different Dallas-area grocery stores. After I found the best deals, I sent her off for one-stop-shopping at Walmart to snag them. Here’s how we did:
The Power of Price Matching| Regular cost for five grocery items at Walmart | $ 20.69 |
| Price-matching cost for five grocery items | 10.77 |
| Dollar savings | $ 9.92 |
| BIG SAVINGS = | 48% |
That’s a $9.92 savings on just five items. More importantly, Guerrilla Grocery Shoppers, it’s 48 percent. Imagine if I had price-matched her entire list. Imagine if I had done it all year!
But I’m reading your mind again. You’re glad that I saved Tawawna 48 percent, but you want to know how much time I had to spend to do it. I’ll tell you: about half an hour. It was actually my first time using the CouponMom site, so it took me a little extra time to familiarize myself with the layout. I’m confident I could go back now and do the same thing for even more items in 15 minutes or less. In fact, I’m going to do just that.
Price Matching on Black Friday
You know how people get up at 4 A.M. and go stand in line in the cold to get those door-buster deals the day after Thanksgiving? Instead of going to the stores that offer those amazing deals, go to Walmart. Walmart doesn’t do deep Black Friday discounts because its strategy is to offer low everyday prices. But it will honor other stores’ Black Friday sales! This Big Secret is courtesy of Chrissy Pate of
www.BeCentsAble.net.
How Much Can You Save?
Okay, Guerrilla Grocery Shoppers, I just went back to
CouponMom.com to see how much money I could save you if I price-matched 50 items. I chose a well-balanced variety of food, personal care, and household products that a typical family of four would buy. By price-matching, I was able to spend $111 instead of $200! Let’s say you buy those same 50 grocery items every week. Here’s how the savings would add up in a year:
Benefit of Price Matching| 50 items at regular price | $ 10,400/year |
| Same 50 at price-match price | 5,772/year |
| BIG SAVINGS = | $ 4, 628/year |
It comes to $4,628 saved over the course of a year! That’s a 45 percent discount. Price matching is Guerrilla Grocery Shopping weapon number one because it works—and it’s easy.
BIG TIPS
• Ask local stores if they price-match.
• Try to price-match at a store that also has low everyday prices.
• Keep your store circulars in case you need proof.
• Go to the price-matching store and cash in.
