Retail Pricing: Latex Gloves at Clicks

A couple of days ago I posted an analysis of the price of nitrile gloves at Dischem.

@mattdenni the price of nitrile gloves has increased dramatically over the last year.

More details at https://t.co/nTm481mjwH.@AndrewJacksonZA this might be of interest to you too. pic.twitter.com/1Dbr06Sr0U

— Andrew B. Collier (@datawookie) January 4, 2021

Having seen the increasing prices at Dischem, I was interested to see what was happening at their primary competitor, Clicks.

These are the distinct products we’ll consider. Mostly latex gloves, with a couple of nitrile ones thrown in too.

# A tibble: 7 x 4
  product           material size   count
  <ord>             <chr>    <chr>  <int>
1 Latex Medium 10   Latex    Medium    10
2 Latex Medium 50   Latex    Medium    50
3 Latex Medium 100  Latex    Medium   100
4 Latex Large 10    Latex    Large     10
5 Latex Large 100   Latex    Large    100
6 Nitrile Medium 10 Nitrile  Medium    10
7 Nitrile Large 10  Nitrile  Large     10

Let’s look at how the price for each product has changed over time. We’ll consider the period from 4 February 2020 to 6 January 2021.

Since the packs come in multiple sizes (10, 50 or 100 units) we’ll consider the price per unit rather than the price per pack.

Firstly the latex gloves. These are available in two glove sizes (medium or large) and three pack sizes (10, 50 or 100 units per pack).

Interestingly the price of these gloves has remained completely static over the period of this analysis. Furthermore, as one would expect the price per unit gets lower for larger pack sizes.

Nitrile gloves were only available at Clicks until the end of September. However, again, for the period of this analysis the prices have remained constant.

How did Clicks manage to keep their prices constant, while Dischem has been incrimentally increasing prices?