The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A Bahamian merchant yesterday warned that the Government’s newly-unveiled price transparency and competitiveness app will “cause more harm than good” for small retailers in its current format, adding that such operators should be “super worried”.

Brent Burrows, vice-president of CBS Bahamas, told Tribune Business that - in its current configuration - the Price Pal app, which was again promoted by the Government yesterday (see article on Page 3B), is more suited to larger merchants such as his company and threatens to disadvantage the very small retailers, such as ‘Mom and Pop’ stores, that it is intended to benefit.

Emphasising that he is not against price competition, and that the intent behind the app is a noble one, he added that those retailers who lack both “tech savviness” and a proper online presence - typically the smaller merchants - will struggle to update Price Pal with information on their current prices and stock in real time. As a result, these operators could be exposed to inaccurate, outdated pricing details that “push people away from shopping with them”.

Mr Burrows, warning that smaller Bahamian merchants will likely face “a massive challenge” just to place pricing information in a format that can both integrate with Price Pal and be easily digested by consumers, said the only alternative to such businesses doing this themselves was to rely on the Government’s price control inspectors to manually upload the relevant details after they visit store locations.

However, he argued that it will be “next to impossible” for price control inspectors to do this as there are not nearly enough to canvas the hundreds of retail stores spread throughout The Bahamas on a frequency that matches how regularly prices are updated. Citing CBS Bahamas as an example, Mr Burrows said his company typically makes around 200 pricing changes per week based on the 600-700 stock-keeping units (SKUs) contained in the two containers it imports.

While praising the Government and Price Pal’s developer for “trying to do the right thing”, he told this newspaper that insufficient thought had gone into how the app will work long-term for the benefit of both Bahamian retail and its consumers. He suggested that a better approach would have been to “tap into” existing technology, updating pricing catalogues on a regular basis via Google, and encouraging smaller retailers to establish a digital presence with systems better able to meet their needs.

And the CBS Bahamas chief also warned that, in its current form, he “doesn’t expect a lot of people” to use Price Pal because, having already been part of its beta testing himself, he found it to be “clunky” and “not very user friendly”. The app currently features 30,000 products, and has been downloaded by 400 persons already, ahead of its upcoming national launch.

“If I wasn’t CBS, and maybe a small retailer, and I didn’t quite have the tech savviness and didn’t have a digital presence, then yes, I’d be super-worried,” Mr Burrows told Tribune Business of Price Pal. “At the end of the day, you have two options.

“You have to figure out how to send your own pricing to Price Pal. This is going to be difficult; it’s going to be hard for a small retailer. It’s going to be hard for someone who is not tech savvy to figure that out. A lot of POS (Point of Sale) systems, that’s going to be a massive challenge just to put that information together in a format they can digest and publish, and at least do it in a way where you can do it responsibly and in a timely manner.

“The other option is that you rely on these price inspectors, basically, to do that for you, and I don’t care how many price inspectors you have, it’s going to be next to impossible to canvas hundreds of stores across The Bahamas across hundreds, if not thousands, of products manually and upload those prices,” Mr Burrows added.

“Just look at CBS Bahamas. We have two containers of product coming in a week. Let’s say we have 600-700 SKUs in each container. We’re probably doing 100 price changes per container. So that’s 200 price changes per week just at CBS Bahamas. Are they going to send a price inspector to CBS Bahamas two times’ per week to update those prices.

“It’s just foolish to even think it can work, so at the end of the day, for most people it’s probably going to cause more harm than good. I think the larger retailers who can integrate with them [Price Pal] and push the prices, they will have the advantage, but it’s going to hurt the small retailer. It’s going to hurt the small ‘Mom and Pop’ shop that can’t keep up. It’s another thing to have to worry about and think about, and it’s going to push people away from shopping with them.”

Confirming that he and CBS Bahamas had been a Price Pal test user, having signed up when the app was “first being pushed around”, Mr Burrows challenged the Government’s decision to invest $225,000 to develop “a solution that quite probably is not going to work very well”. He added: “We’ve spent a bunch of money on this app trying to do the right thing without thinking how it’s actually going to work and how it’s going to work long-term.

“Even us at CBS, I’m apprehensive to figure out how they want us to integrate and update our own prices because that’s just another job I have to worry about every week or every couple of days when containers come in.

“There’s existing technology they could have tapped into,” the CBS Bahamas vice-president explained. “They could have encouraged people to start using, for example, the Google feed. We have a direct connection set up to Google catalogues now where our prices are in fed in automatically… to Google every couple of days. I click one button and that’s done.

“This is the sort of thing the Government should have been looking to do - to tap into existing technology and make this process as quick and seamless and easy as possible so that people actually use it and, at the same time, it can help those smaller retailers to digitise their own presence and get on board with some of those more common technologies that are going to help them in the long run.”

Mr Burrows said the Government and developers of Price Pal, which falls under the Consumer Protection Commission and Consumer Affairs Department, have not stipulated how the app will handle pricing-related issues such as promotions, trade discounts and case pack discounts.

Describing the app as “clunky”, which impacts the user experience, he added: “It’s going to end up as another expense item for the larger businesses that can afford to play with it and, for the smaller businesses, the Mom and Pop stores and the smaller retailers, it’s going to do more harm than good because they are not going to be able to keep up or are going to have to spend money that they didn’t have to spend before trying to integrate with this thing just hoping that they don’t fall behind.

“In my mind, there’s a lot more they could have done with $225,000 to push people towards digitisation that would have been more beneficial for the customers and the retailers as a whole. At the end of the day, I don’t think Price Pal is going to do good for the businesses and, in its current form, I don’t expect a lot of people to use it because of the clunkiness of the app itself. We’ll see what comes out of it.”

Mr Burrows, though, said CBS Bahamas will not be affected - and will “overcome” - any inaccurate and outdated pricing information disseminated by Price Pal because of its existing technology and website platform, as well as use of Google catalogues, as these ensure it is “very transparent” with product costs and put the necessary details out to consumers in real time.

The PricePal app, which is currently in its testing phase, is a price comparison tool launched by the Government to allow for market competitiveness and provide shoppers with a resource that will help them find products for the cheapest price. Developed by the Novio Group and launched on February 10, the beta testing is being expanded and more testers are needed.